Then, looking steadfastly at his father, and stopping now and
then to carry a spoonful of tea to his lips, he proceeded in the same
tone, thus:
'Want, indeed! You're a nice old man to be talking of want at this time
of day. Beginning to talk of want, are you? Well, I declare! There isn't
time? No, I should hope not. But you'd live to be a couple of hundred if
you could; and after all be discontented. I know you!'
The old man sighed, and still sat cowering before the fire. Mr Jonas
shook his Britannia-metal teaspoon at him, and taking a loftier
position, went on to argue the point on high moral grounds.
'If you're in such a state of mind as that,' he grumbled, but in the
same subdued key, 'why don't you make over your property? Buy an annuity
cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else
that watches the speculation. But no, that wouldn't suit YOU. That would
be natural conduct to your own son, and you like to be unnatural, and to
keep him out of his rights. Why, I should be ashamed of myself if I was
you, and glad to hide my head in the what you may call it.
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