and Mrs. Whittingen, two sons,
Ernest and Harvey, and three daughters, Ruth, Martha, and Mary, were,
as one might gather from their names alone, plain, practical, genteel,
and in fact very superior people, who were by no means lacking in that
exceedingly useful quality of canniness, so characteristic of the
Lowland Scot to which race they belonged. Mr. Whittingen had, for
years, conducted a grocery business in Jedburgh, twice filling the
honoured and coveted post of mayor, and when he at length retired into
private life, his friends (and it was astonishing how many friends he
had) shrewdly suspected that his pockets were not only well lined but
full to bursting. Acting on the advice of his wife and daughters, who
were keen on social distinction, he sent Ernest to Oxford,
conditionally that he should take Holy Orders in the Church of
England, whilst Harvey, who, when scarcely out of the petticoat stage,
displayed the regular Whittingen talent for business by covertly
helping himself to the sugar in his father's shop, and disposing of it
at strictly sale price to his sisters' cronies in the nursery, was
sent to one of those half preparatory and half finishing schools (of
course, for the sons of gentlemen only) at Edinburgh, where he was
kept till he was old enough to be articled to a prosperous,
exceedingly prosperous, firm of solicitors.
The girls, Ruth, Martha, and Mary, had likewise been highly educated,
that is to say, they had remained so many years at an English seminary
for young ladies, and had been given a final twelve months in France
and Germany to enable them to obtain "the correct accent.
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