 come to want in your old age, that you
take to wasting now?«
    »There's not time for that, Jonas,« said the old man.
    »Not time for what?« bawled his heir.
    »For me to come to want. I wish there was!«
    »You always were as selfish an old blade as need be,« said Jonas, in a voice
too low for him to hear, and looking at him with an angry frown. »You act up to
your character. You wouldn't mind coming to want, wouldn't you! I dare say you
wouldn't. And your own flesh and blood might come to want too, might they, for
anything you cared? Oh you precious old flint!«
    After this dutiful address he took his tea-cup in his hand: for that meal
was in progress, and the father and son and Chuffey were partakers of it. Then,
looking steadfastly at his father, and stopping now and then to carry a spoonful
of tea to his lips, he proceeded in the same tone, thus:
    »Want, indeed! You're a nice old man to be talking of want at this time of
day. Beginning to talk of want, are you? Well, I declare! There isn't time? No,
I should hope not. But you'd live to be a couple of hundred if you could; and
after all be discontented. I know you!«
    The old man sighed, and still sat cowering before the fire. Mr. Jonas shook
his Britannia-metal teaspoon at him, and taking a loftier position went on to
argue the point on high moral grounds.
    »If you're in such a state of mind as that,« he grumbled, but in the same
subdued key, »why don't you make over your property? Buy an annuity cheap, and
make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the
speculation. But no, that wouldn't suit you. That would be natural conduct to
your own son, and you like to be unnatural, and to keep him out of his rights.
Why, I should be ashamed of myself if I was you, and glad to hide my head in the
what you may call it.«
    Possibly this general phrase supplied the place of grave, or tomb, or
sepulchre, or cemetery, or mausoleum, or other such word which the filial
tenderness of Mr. Jonas made him delicate of pronouncing. He pursued the theme
no further;
