who had been wrecked off their coast.

Jason was a great favorite with Mrs. Fairbrother, notwithstanding
that he did no work. Rumor had magnified the fortune that Stephen
Orry had left him, and the two hundred pounds stood at two thousand
in her eyes. With a woman's quick instinct she saw how Jason stood
towards Greeba, almost before he had himself become conscious of it,
and she smiled on him and favored him. A whisper of this found its
way from Lague to Government House, and old Adam shook his head. He
had nothing against Jason, except that the lad was not fond of work,
and whether Jason was poor or rich counted for very little, but he
could not forget his boy Sunlocks.

Thus while Greeba remained with her father there was but little
chance that she could wrong the promise she had made to Michael; but
events seemed to force her into the arms of Jason. Her mother had
never been of an unselfish spirit, and since parting from her husband
she had shown a mean penuriousness. This affected her six sons
chiefly, and they realized that when she had taken their side against
their father she had taken the cream of their living also. Lague was
now hers for her lifetime, and only theirs after she was done with
it; and if they asked much more for their work than bed and board she
reminded them of this, and bade them wait. Soon tiring of their
Lenten entertainment, they trooped off, one after one, to their
father, badly as they had dealt by him, and complained loudly of the
great wrong he had done them when he made over the lands of Lague to
their mother. What were they now, though sons of the Governor? No
better than hinds on their mother's farm, expected to work for her
from light to dusk, and getting nothing for their labor but the house
she kept over their heads. Grown men they all were now, and the elder
of them close on their prime, yet none were free to marry, for none
had the right to a penny for the living he earned; and all this came
of their father's unwise generosity.

Old Adam could not gainsay them, and he would not reproach them, so
he did all that remained to him to do, and that was to exercise a
little more of the same unwise generosity, and give them money. And
finding this easy means of getting what they wanted, they came again
and again, all six of them, from Asher to Gentleman Johnny, and as
often as they came they went away satisfied, though old Adam shook
his head when he saw how mean and small was the sp