I've got nothing special
to do--just to travel about and see things and kill
time--I shall probably go to Italy and Switzerland
and Paris and the Rhine and all sorts of places--and it
occurred to me that I'd take the two youngsters with me.
I could get acquainted with them, that way, and they'd
be company for me. I've been lonesome so long, it would
feel good to have some of my own flesh and blood about
me--and I suppose they'd be tickled to death to go."
"Their schooling and board are paid for up to Christmas,"
Mrs. Dabney objected, blankly.
"Bah!" Thorpe prolonged the emphatic exclamation into
something good-natured, and ended it with an abrupt laugh.
"What on earth difference does that make? I could go
and buy their damned colleges, and let the kids wear them
for breastpins if I wanted to. You said the girl was
going to quit at Christmas in any case. Won't she learn
more in four months travelling about on the Continent,
than she would trotting around in her own tracks there
at Cheltenham?
"And it's even more important for the boy. He's of an age
when he ought to see something of the world, and I ought
to see something of him. Whatever he's going to do,
it's time that he began getting his special start for it."
He added, upon a luminous afterthought: " Perhaps his seeing
the old Italian picture galleries and so on will cure him
of wanting to be an artist.
Pages:
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162