Some of
the men too were in misfortune after a while. Some disaster sent up a
big wave which washed them off their little rafts. I used to wonder what
became of them. One I know died of heart-trouble. He was never troubled
with his heart when he sat in our parlour laying down the law to a
harassed widow and trying to get her money into his own rotten little
business. Oh, it used to make my heart burn within me; but what could I
do? All very fine for boys in novels to make vows to get the fortune
back. Humph! You might as well try to get butter off a dog's tongue, or
capture the steam from the kettle. Its _gone_! Besides, I always had a
dumb dislike of business. I used to moon. We were so troubled with
business-troubles we had no time to live. We never really got to know
each other. I used to think my mother was hard and unsympathetic because
her view of life wasn't mine--as if it could be. It was a miserable
tangle. There was my father, whose love for us made him leave us that
horrible legacy of investments. And my mother was so busy providing for
us she had no leisure to love us. And my brother and I were so
different in temper and age and inclination we simply ignored each
other. Love? It's easy to talk; but think of the innumerable gradations
of it! Think of how incompetent most of us are to express it! I used to
hear the servants use the word, and I would wonder. I used to read
stories about it, and wonder still more. Little Lord Fauntleroy....
Humph!

"Somehow or other, my mother did eventually get things straight. There
wasn't much to bring up a future Prime Minister on, and besides, there
was my brother. He took more after my father than I did. I was mother's
boy, but he was a dark daring little devil without much respect for
either of us. I don't know quite how it began, but between us there grew
a feeling that can't be called brotherly love. Perhaps he realized that,
according to my mother's ideas of founding a family, I was to be first
and he was to be--nowhere. As it happened this was not just. He was
clever from the very first. I was to be an engineer, and he was to
do--well, anything that came along. But he had the talent for
engineering; I hadn't. I liked it, same as any boy does, but while I
couldn't do a simple division sum without making a mess of it, he could
do it in his head, and standing on his head for that matter. Whatever he
tried, that he could do, whereas my range has always been quiet and
lim