My poor mother's rhetorical armory supplied no weapon to meet that
artful Aposiopesis; so she dropped the rhetoric altogether, and went on
with that "unadorned eloquence" natural to her, as to other great
financial reformers: "Well, Roland, but I am a good housewife, I assure
you, and--Don't scold; but that you never do;--I mean, don't look as if
you would like to scold. The fact is, that even after setting aside
L100 a year for our little parties--"

"Little parties!--a hundred a year!" cried the Captain, aghast.

My mother pursued her way remorselessly,--"which we can well afford; and
without counting your half-pay, which you must keep for pocket-money and
your wardrobe and Blanche's,--I calculate that we can allow Pisistratus
L150 a year, which, with the scholarship he is to get, will keep him at
Cambridge" (at that, seeing the scholarship was as yet amidst the
Pleasures of Hope, I shook my head doubtfully), "and," continued my
mother, not heeding that sign of dissent, "we shall still have something
to lay by."

The Captain's face assumed a ludicrous expression of compassion and
horror; he evidently thought my mother's misfortunes had turned her
head.

His tormentor continued.

"For," said my mother, with a pretty calculating shake of her head, and
a movement of the right forefinger towards the five fingers of the left
hand, "L370,--the interest of Austin's fortune,--and L50 that we may
reckon for the rent of our house, make L420 a year. Add your L330 a