o see that will carried out, Thorne. Now I'll tell you
what I have done."
"You're not going to tell me how you have disposed of your property?"
"Not exactly; at least not all of it. One hundred thousand I've left
in legacies, including, you know, what Lady Scatcherd will have."
"Have you not left the house to Lady Scatcherd?"
"No; what the devil would she do with a house like this? She doesn't
know how to live in it now she has got it. I have provided for her;
it matters not how. The house and the estate, and the remainder of my
money, I have left to Louis Philippe."
"What! two hundred thousand pounds?" said the doctor.
"And why shouldn't I leave two hundred thousand pounds to my son,
even to my eldest son if I had more than one? Does not Mr Gresham
leave all his property to his heir? Why should not I make an eldest
son as well as Lord de Courcy or the Duke of Omnium? I suppose a
railway contractor ought not to be allowed an eldest son by Act of
Parliament! Won't my son have a title to keep up? And that's more
than the Greshams have among them."
The doctor explained away what he said as well as he could. He could
not explain that what he had really meant was this, that Sir Roger
Scatcherd's son was not a man fit to be trusted with the entire
control of an enormous fortune.
Sir Roger Scatcherd had but one child; that child which had been born
in the days of his early troubles, and had been dismissed from his
mother's breast in order that the mother's milk might nourish the
young heir of Greshamsbury. The boy had grown up, but had become
strong neither in mind nor body. His father had determined to make
a gentleman of him, and had sent to Eton and to Cambridge. But
even this receipt, generally as it is recognised, will not make a
gentleman. It is hard, indeed, to define what receipt will do so,
though people do have in their own minds some certain undefined, but
yet tolerably correct ideas on the subject. Be that as it may, two
years at Eton, and three terms at Cambridge, did not make a gentleman
of Louis Philippe Scatcherd.
Yes; he was christened Louis Philippe, after the King of the French.
If one wishes to look out in the world for royal nomenclature, to
find children who have been christened after kings and queens, or
the uncles and aunts of kings and queens, the search should be made
in the families of democrats. None have so servile a deference for
the very nail-parings of royalty; none feel so w
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