“Why should you take all this trouble, papa?” she said, suddenly. “I have been thinking; and this is what I feel sure of, that it should all be altered. You are not ill, or likely to die. Instead of writing out all these orders for me, would it not be much better if you would put that paper aside and do the things you have put into it yourself?”
He looked at her over the top of his spectacles with an air of consternation.
“Do the things myself! what things?” he said, then paused and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, and gazed at her almost fiercely with his small keen eyes. “That paper!” he repeated; “do you mean the will, my will, Lucy?” The tone in which he spoke was as if it had been the British Constitution which Lucy proposed to set aside.
“Yes,” she said. “You see, papa, I shall be very young, I shall not have very much sense.”
“You have a great deal of sense, Lucy,” he said, mollified, “far more than most girls. Providence has made you for the work you have got to do.”
“But, papa,” she said, “I shall be very young; it will be very hard upon me to decide what is to be done with all that money, and to give and not to give. It will be very hard. How should I know which are the right people? I should either want to give to everybody or to nobody. I should throw it away, or I should be too frightened to make any use of it at all.”
“That will be impossible,” said old Trevor, with a nod of satisfaction; “I have taken precautions about that.”
“Very likely, my dear, very likely; every one has to pay for his own experience. It is a very dear commodity, Lucy; I can’t give you mine, you must get it for yourself, and it has always, always to be paid for. There is no question about that.”
“But, papa, would it not be a great deal better--you who have this experience, who have paid for it and got it--instead of living quietly here as if you were nobody, to do it all yourself?”
“There you have hit it, Lucy,” he said, “there you have hit it, my dear. I live quietly, as if I were nobody--and I am nobody--that is exactly the state of affairs.”
“But,” she cried, with great surprise and indignation, “if you mean nobody in family, then neither am I, but the money, the money is all yours to do with it whatever you please.”