It's all my unfortunate hair. They must have gone
by this time--they were to go very early, weren't they?"
Lady Cressage glanced at the clock. "It was 8:40,
I think--fully half an hour ago," she answered,
with a painstaking effect of indifference.
"Curious conglomeration"--mused the other. "The boy and
girl are so civilized, and their uncle is so rudimentary.
I'm afraid they are spoiling him just as the missionaries
spoil the noble savage. They ought to go away and leave
him alone. As a barbarian he was rather effective--but
they will whitewash him and gild him and make a tame
monstrosity of him. But I suppose it's inevitable.
Having made his fortune, it is the rule that he must set
up as a gentleman. We do it more simply in America.
One generation makes the fortune, and leaves it to
the next generation to put on the frills. My father,
for example, never altered in the slightest degree the
habits he formed when he was a poor workman. To the day
of his death, blessed old man, he remained what he had
always been--simple, pious, modest, hard-working, kindly,
and thrifty--a model peasant. Nothing ever tempted him a
hair's-breadth out of the path he had been bred to walk in.
But such nobility of mind and temper with it all! He never
dreamed of suggesting that I should walk in the same path.
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