"Settle?" said Cecilia. "No, he only goes for a year or two."

"That's more than I can say, madam, or any body else; and nobody knows
what may happen in that time. And how I shall keep myself up when he's
beyond seas, I am sure I don't know, for he has always been the pride
of my life, and every penny I saved for him, I thought to have been
paid in pounds."

"You will still have your daughter, and she seems so amiable, that I
am sure you can want no consolation she will not endeavour to give
you."

"But what is a daughter, madam, to such a son as mine? a son that I
thought to have seen living like a prince, and sending his own coach
for me to dine with him! And now he's going to be taken away from me,
and nobody knows if I shall live till he comes back. But I may thank
myself, for if I had but been content to see him brought up in the
shop--yet all the world would have cried shame upon it, for when he
was quite a child in arms, the people used all to say he was born to
be a gentleman, and would live to make many a fine lady's heart ache."

"If he can but make _your_ heart easy," said Cecilia, smiling,
"we will not grieve that the fine ladies should escape the prophecy."

"O, ma'am, I don't mean by that to say he has been over gay among the
ladies, for it's a thing I never heard of him; and I dare say if any
lady was to take a fancy to him, she'd find there was not a modester
young man in the world. But you must needs think what a hardship it is
to me to have him turn out so unlucky, after all I have done for him,
when I thought to have seen him at the top of the tree, as one may