Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/37

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Geoffrey.

‘Ah, well, I suppose we had better give it up and try something else. Humphreys tells me he thinks you might succeed in light literature. How does the idea strike you?’

‘I fancy it would be preferable to the heavy, if the heavy is what I have been attempting so far.’

His uncle looked serious, and after a moment got up and paced thoughtfully up and down the room. The nephew noticed that some haggard lines that had lately come into the elder man’s face were more pronounced than usual. ‘I am willing to give it a trial, sir,’ he said.

‘Yes, but what I am anxious to find out is not what you are willing to attempt to oblige me, but what you are desirous of doing yourself, because time is going on and the matter is—important.’ He came to a standstill and looked down on his nephew, his face working under the stress of some inward emotion. ‘I have tried, my boy,’ he said, ‘to obtain and deserve your confidence.’

‘Oh, sir,’ said Geoffrey, springing to his feet, deeply moved, ‘all my life I have looked up to you as the best and most generous of men.’

‘I have endeavoured to make no difference between you and your cousins. When I die you will find that what I have is divided equally amongst all of you. I had already made up my mind to that when I first undertook the charge of you, and the only thing which could have made me alter my intention was the chance of your father’s success in New Zealand. I never thought he would succeed, and as a fact he did not. From what Robert tells us he appears to have left very little.’ Mr. Hernshaw