“I’m not sure. I think I might. But I’d jolly well like to be able to.”

able

The man followed the theme up with the boy. In his stern heart Hugh had already found a warmer place than Stephen had, and Bransby’s kindliness to the brothers was as nothing compared to his love of Helen. But it was—of the three—to Stephen that he talked most often and longest, and with a seriousness he rarely felt or showed in talk with the others. Stephen Pryde interested his uncle keenly. Bransby did not think Hugh interesting, and Helen not especially so—charming (he felt her charm, and knew that others did who lacked a father’s prejudiced predisposition), but not notably interesting as a mentality or even as a character.

She was not an over-talkative child. Bransby suspected that also she was not over-thoughtful. And he was quite right. She felt a great deal: she thought very little. And her small thinkings were neither accurate, searching nor synthetic.

But Stephen thought much and keenly, and the boy talked well, but not too well. Stephen Pryde made few mistakes. When he did he would probably make bad ones. He was not given to small blunders. And such few mistakes as he did make he was gifted with agility to cover up and retrieve finely. Richard enjoyed talking with Stephen.

Helen was not interested in the flight of birds, and still less in its possible application to affairs of mercantile profit, or of national power. She interrupted them at a tense and interesting turn, and neither the man nor the boy resented it.

“What have you been doing?” she demanded of her father.

“Reading ‘David Copperfield’ until Grant came.”

“Is it a nice book?”

“Yes—very.”

“Is it a story book?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll let you read me some, and see if I like it.”

Bransby pointed to the volume, and Stephen brought it to him, still open at the passage he had been reading when his clerk had interrupted him.

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