V

"My Dear Colonel;--The Rev. Marcus Flather has just written me a letter
at which I am greatly shocked and perplexed, informing me that my brother
Charles has given him a draft upon you for two hundred and fifty pounds,
when goodness knows it is not you but we who are many, many hundred
pounds debtors to you. Charles has explained that he drew the bill at
your desire, that you wrote to say you would be glad to serve him in any
way, and that the money is wanted to make his fortune. Yet I don't know--
poor Charles is always going to make his fortune and has never done it.
That school which he bought, and for which you and me between us paid the
purchase-money, turned out no good, and the only pupils left at the end
of the first half-year were two woolly-headed poor little mulattos, whose
father was in gaol at St. Kitt's, and whom I kept actually in my own
second-floor back room whilst the lawyers were settling things, and
Charles was away in France, and until my dearest little Clive came to
live with me.

"Then, as he was too small for a great school, I thought Clive could not
do better than stay with his old aunt and have his Uncle Charles for a
tutor, who is one of the finest scholars in the world. I wish you could
hear him in the pulpit. His delivery is grander and more impressive than
any divine now in England. His sermons you have subscribed for, and
likewise his book of elegant poems, which are pronounced to be very fine.

"When he returned from Calais, and those horrid lawyers had left off
worriting him, I thought as his frame was much shattered and he was too
weak to take a curacy, that he could not do better than become Clive's
tutor, and agreed to pay him out of your handsome donation of 250 pounds
for Clive, a sum of one hundred pounds per year, so that, when the board