Perhaps I would better have taken a leaf from Henry's book, and have cut loose from the family homestead, and set up for myself, when father died. I think I should have done so had I been left to myself. But mother was accustomed to my ministrations; and John could hardly have dealt alone with the matters consequent upon his accession. And, to confess the truth, I am indolent: I lack ambition; I lack a motive. If the opportunity or the stimulus came, I like to fancy I might do or be something in the world,—if, for instance, I instead of John had inherited Cedarcliffe and sixty thousand a year. But since, in order to that, both John and Henry must die before me, and unmarried, my stimulus and opportunity are not likely to come to time. Heaven forbid they should!
It is rather singular, by the way, that neither of us three boys has ever seriously thought of marriage. John is now thirty-two, and getting set in his ways: for his own sake, as well as for the family's, he ought not to delay much longer. Father set his heart upon the perpetuation of the Mainwaring line in America; and he built this great stone mansion, and bought the two hundred acres of ground on which it stands, with the purpose that it should be our homestead forever. But John does not seem to be attracted by women, or to attract them,—apart from the fact that he is a millionaire. I am not a marrying man, either; I never was so much in love with any girl as I am with my cobra. Henry is the lady's-man of the family: he was always cherishing a romantic passion for somebody, and had a score of good chances of becoming a Benedict, even before he went abroad. What he may have done since, I know not. But he is as fickle as he is impressionable; and I doubt whether he will ever bring himself to the point of calling any woman his wife. What a villanous mischance it would be if we were all to remain childless, and Cedarcliffe were finally to go to some of our unknown English relatives! There is Edward Forrestal, for instance, my mother's brother. The last we heard of him was twenty years ago, when he married and was going to India. He may have a dozen children by this time, who would come in for a share of our spoils. It would be too bad.
Now that I have got my cobra, I intend to make some experiments in snake-charming. I ought to succeed, for I was always fond of snakes, and they never seemed inclined to harm me. I hope to discover how the effects are produced, and to get at something like a scientific formula for it. There must be a further use for serpents than has been yet revealed. Since the time of Adam they are reputed to have done much harm to the human race; but I believe that they may be rendered as beneficent as they have hitherto been hostile. Probably the
