eyes on; four hunters and a hack. Now, if old Baker has four thousand a year it's every shilling he has got.'
This was true, and Frank Gresham, who in the morning had been made so happy by his father's present of a horse, began to feel that hardly enough had been done for him. It was true that Mr. Baker had only four thousand a year; but it was also true that he had no other child than Harry Baker; that he had no great establishment to keep up; that he owed a shilling to no one, and, also, that he was a great fool in encouraging a mere boy to ape all the caprices of a man of wealth. Nevertheless, for a moment Frank Gresham did feel that, considering his position, he was being treated rather unworthily.
'Take the matter in your own hands, Frank,' said the Honourable John, seeing the impression that he had made. 'Of course the governor knows very well that you won't put up with such a stable as that. Lord bless you! I have heard that when he married my aunt, and that was when he was about your age, he had the best stud in the whole county; and then he was in parliament before he was three-and-twenty.'
'His father, you know, died when he was very young,' said Frank.
'Yes; I know he had a stroke of luck that doesn't fall to every one; but—'
Young Frank's face grew dark now instead of red. When his cousin submitted to him the necessity of having more than two horses for his own use he could listen to him; but when the same monitor talked of the chance of a father's death as a stroke of luck, Frank was too much disgusted to be able to pretend to pass it over with indifference. What! was he thus to think of his father, whose face was always lighted up with pleasure when his boy came near him, and so rarely bright at any other time? Frank had watched his father closely enough to be aware of this; he knew how his father delighted in him, he had had cause to guess that his father had many troubles, and that he strove hard to banish the memory of them when his son was with him. He loved his father truly, purely, and thoroughly, liked to be with him, and would be proud to be his confidant. Could he then listen quietly while his cousin spoke of the chance of his father's death as a stroke of luck?
'I shouldn't think it a stroke of luck, John. I should think it the greatest misfortune in the world.'
It is so difficult for a young man to enumerate sententiously a principle of morality, or even an expression of ordinary good feeling, without giving himself something of a ridiculous air without assuming something of mock grandeur!
