He was a very good
religious man, as Mr. Underwood well knew, having been his great
comforter through several family troubles, which had left him and his
wife alone with one surviving and woefully spoilt son, who hated the
trade, and had set his heart upon being a farmer--chiefly with a view
to hunting. Mr. Froggatt was conscious of having been too indulgent,
but the mother and son were against him; and the superior tone of
education that the son had received at the reformed grammar school
had only set him above the business, instead of, as had been
intended, rendering him more useful in it.
Good Mr. Froggatt, an old-fashioned tradesman, with a profound
feeling for a real gentleman, was a good deal shocked at receiving
Mr. Underwood's message. He kept a reading-room, and was on terms of
a certain intimacy with its frequenters, such as had quite warranted
his first requests for Felix's good-natured help, and it had been
really as a sort of jesting compliment that he had told the young
gentleman that he wished he would take Smith's place, little
expecting to see how earnestly the words were caught up, how the boy
asked whether he really meant it, and when, on further consideration,
he allowed that it might be possible, begging him to wait till his
father could be spoken to.
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