The opening of I. THEIR FATHER
The reason why Mr. Renton’s sons were sent out into the world in the humble manner, and with the results we are about to record, must be first told, in order that their history may be comprehensible to the reader. Had they been a poor man’s sons no explanation would have been necessary; but their father was anything but a poor man. The family was one of those exceptional families which add active exertion to hereditary endowments. Though the Rentons had been well-known people in Berks for two or three centuries, it had almost been a family tradition that each successive heir, instead of resting content with the good things Providence had given him, should add by his own efforts to the family store. There had been pirates among them in Elizabeth’s time. They had made money when everybody else lost money in the time of the ‘South Sea.’ Mr. Renton’s father had gone to India young, and had returned, what was then called, a ‘Nabob.’ Mr.