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A poor gentleman

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Margaret Oliphant

A poor gentleman

language ( June 19, 2018)
Nothing could be more unlike than the two families who bore the same name, and lived within sight of each other. The one all gravity and importance and severe splendor; the other poor, irregular, noisy, full of shifts and devices, full of tumult and young life. Mrs. Fenton, Sir Walter's daughter (for her husband, who was nobody in particular, had taken her name), went from time to time with the housekeeper through the ranges of vacant rooms, ail furnished with a sort of somber magnificence, to see that they w^ere aired and kept in order; while her namesake at the Hook (as it was called) schemed how to fit a bed into a new corner, as the boys and girls grew bigger, to make room for their lengthening limbs and the decorum which advancing years demanded. It was difficult to kill time in the one house, and almost impossible to find one day long enough for all the work that had to be done in it, in the other. In the one the question of ways and means was a subject unnecessary to be discussed. The exchequer was full, there were no calls upon it which could not be amply met at any moment, nor any occasion to think whether or not a new expense should be incurred. Mr. Eussell Fenton,, perhaps, the husband of Mrs. Fenton, had not always been in this happy condition. It was possible that in his experience a less comfortable state of affairs might have existed,, or even might still, by moments, exist; but so far as the knowledge of Sir Walter and his daughter went, it was only mismanagement, extravagance, or want of financial capacity which made anybody poor; they could not understand why their relations at the Hook should be needy and embarrassed.

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