212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

258 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
" Yes, sir, so much the better."
" Have ten thousand apiece. Would have twenty thousand if
they got yours. Quite natural to want it."
"Quite."
" Woolcomb a sort of negro, I understand. Fine property here :
besides the West India rubbish. Violent man—so people tell me.
Luckily Agnes seems a cool easy-going woman, and mu3t put up
with the rough as well as the smooth in marrying a property like
that. Very lucky for you that that woman persists there was no
marriage with your father. Twysden says the Doctor bribed her.
Take it he's not got much money to bribe, unless you gave some of
yours."
"I don't bribe people to bear false witness, my Lord—and
if _________ "
"Don't be in a huff; I didn't say so. Twysden says so—
perhaps thinks so. When people are at law they believe anything
of one another."
" I don't know what other people may do, sir. If I had another
man's money, I should not be easy until I had paid him back.
Had my share of my grandfather's property not been lawfully mine
—and for a few hours I thought it was not—please God, I would
have given it up to its rightful owners—at least, my father would."
" Why, hang it all, man, you don't mean to say your father has
not settled with you ?"
Philip blushed a little. He had been rather surprised that
there had been no settlement between him and his father.
"I am only of age a few months, sir. I am not under any
apprehension. I get my dividends regularly enough. One of my
grandfather's trustees, General Baynes, is in India. He is to return
almost immediately, or we should have sent a power of attorney out
to him. There's no hurry about the business."
Philip's maternal grandfather, and Lord Ringwood's brother,
the late Colonel Philip Ringwood, had died possessed of but trifling
property of his own ; but his wife had brought him a fortune of
sixty thousand pounds, which was settled on their children, and in
the names of trustees—Mr. Briggs, a lawyer, and Colonel Baynes,
an East India officer, and friend of Mrs. Philip Ringwood's family.
Colonel Baynes had been in England some eight years before ; and
Philip remembered a kind old gentleman coming to see him at school,
and leaving tokens of his bounty behind. The other trustee, Mr.
Briggs, a lawyer of considerable county reputation, was dead long
since, having left his affairs in an involved condition. During the
trustee's absence and the son's minority, Philip's father received the
dividends on his son's property, and liberally spent them on the