'But you are leading a new life.'

'Only because there is no one to bully me,' he said. Still, there
had been no reproach against him all the time he had been at Frith
and Castleford's, when suddenly we had a great shock.

Parties were running very high, and there were scurrilous papers
about, which my father perfectly abhorred; and one day at dinner,
when declaiming against something he had seen, he laid down strict
commands that none should be brought into the house. Then, glancing
at Clarence, something possessed him to say, 'You have not been
buying any.'

'No, sir,' Clarence answered; but a few minutes later, when we were
alone together, the others having left him to help me upstairs, he
exclaimed, 'Edward, what is to be done? I didn't buy it; but there
is one of those papers in my great-coat pocket. Pollard threw it on
my desk; and there was something in it that I thought would amuse
you.'

'Oh! why didn't you say so?'

'There I am again! I simply could not, with his eye on me!
Miserable being that I am! Oh, where is the spirit of ghostly
strength?'

'Helping you now to take it to papa in the study and explain!' I
cried; but the struggle in that tall fellow was as if he had been
seven years old instead of seventeen, ere he put his hand over his
face and gave me his arm to come out into the hall, fetch the paper,