And true to its deep-seated heart; and soon
Will swim in lucid atmosphere of dawn,
And take the golden blessings of new day.

THE SPENDTHRIFT'S DAUGHTER.

IN SIX CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

WHAT is five thousand a year, when a man
spends six? Make it ten, and he will spend
twelve. There is an old story I have heard
my mother tell:—

A man had a legacy left him, so large, that
upon the strength of it he was enabled to
change his plan of life. He sat down and
calculated the style in which it would
henceforward become him to live. His arrangement
of income and expenditure would have
been perfect, only that the income fell short a
certain, not very large, sum. This was a sad
business. A few hundreds more, and he would
have been quite at ease—he had them not
—he began to feel rather poor. A letter arrives
from his man of business. There has been a
mistake; the legacy is of twice the amount it
had been at first stated at. How will it
become him to live now? That is easily
settled—he has only to double all his expenses.
Alas! And he remains twice as poor as he
was before.

There is no limit to extravagance—it is a
bottomless chasm which is not to be filled.

The income does not exactly suffice—and no
man ought to exceed his income. True, but
there are unexpected expenses—things that
perhaps may never recur. The prudent man
economises something else; the imprudent
man goes to his capital. He unlocks that
sacred door of which he holds the enchanted
key in his hand—and ruin rushes out upon
him as a flood.

Julian soon began to touch upon his capital.
It was but in small sums at first, and
yet it is astonishing how rich and easy (for the
time) it made him feel. A thousand or two
thus added to a man's income makes all
mighty smooth, and the consequent diminution
of his future revenue is a trifle, not felt,
and not worth thinking of. Desires increase
with the means to gratify them. He who
takes a thousand or two from his capital, soon
finds it necessary to take more. Income
diminishes as desires gain strength; the habit
of indulgence grows as the means to gratify
it decline.

What with borrowing, and giving bills,
and drawing larger bills to pay the former
bills when they became due, Julian and his
wife had, by the nineteenth year of their
marriage, eaten out the whole core and
marrow of their fortunes. The edifice now stood,
to all appearance, as splendid as ever—but
it had become a house of cards over a bottomless
pit.

And yet they had children; they had not
wanted those best incentives to a better course.
Their possessions in this way were not very
numerous; people of this description have
seldom overflowing nurseries; the mother is
usually too fine a lady to look after her
children herself. She is contented with hiring
some head nurse, taking her on trust from
some other young woman as heedless and
negligent of her duties as herself; and to her
tender mercies she leaves her babies.

Such a nurse had lorded it in Mrs.
Winstanley's family; an ill-governed family in
every respect, where each servant, from the
highest to the lowest, measured his or her
consequence by the money which was spent or
wasted. Under this nurse's care two lovely
boys had died in their infancy. One little
girl had tumbled somewhere or in some way
—or had been made to stand too long in the
corner when she was naughty, or to walk
too far when she was tired, or what, I know
not. All I know is, there was some internal
injury, the cause of which no medical man
who was consulted could detect. The other,
and only remaining child, was a fine, handsome,
spirited girl, of whom Mrs. Nurse thought
proper to be excessively proud and fond.
And how were these little children educated?
Educated is an inappropriate word. There
was no capacity for education on the part of
Nurse; but Mr. and Mrs. Winstanley, though
their dinners were just as numerous and
profuse as ever, saw not the slightest necessity,
whilst the little girls were young, for the
additional expense of any better governess; and
Mrs. Nurse was left to give all the elementary
instruction that was thought needful—a task
which she undertook with alacrity; having
become somewhat apprehensive, now the two
little boys were dead and the two young ladies
getting bigger, that she might be superseded.

Her teaching consisted, first in shaking and
scolding Miss Clementina, and keeping her,
with her poor aching hip, prisoner in her
chair till she had learned a lesson—which, for
want of comprehending the absurdly long
words of which it seemed purposely
composed, it was almost impossible she should
learn; and secondly, in laughing at Miss Ella's
odd blunders as she read, and telling her every
word as it occurred, before she had time to
pronounce it.

As for religion, morality, or knowledge of
right and wrong, Mrs. Nurse thought too little
about such things herself to impart them to
others. I suppose she taught the children to
say their prayers; but I am sure I know no
more than the mother did, whether it was so
or no. Sometimes the children were taken
to stare about them in church; but not often,
for Mrs. Winstanley was in the habit of
fulfilling the commandment very literally,
and making Sunday a day of rest.
Commonly she spent the forenoon in bed; only
getting up in time to dress for a dinner-party
which Mr. Winstanley made an
especial point of having on that day. He,
as yet, paid this trifling respect to it; he