"Very well said!" answered Saville; "and here I hope I can serve you. If
your father will pay the lawful sum for a commission in the Guards, why, I
think I have interest to get you in for that sum alone--no trifling
favour."

Godolphin was enchanted at this proposal, and instantly wrote to his
father, urging it strongly upon him; Saville, in a separate epistle,
seconded the motion. "You see," wrote the latter, "you see, my dear sir,
that your son is a wild, resolute scapegrace. You can do nothing with him
by schools and coercion: put him to discipline in the king's service, and
condemn him to live on his pay. It is a cheap mode, after all, of
providing for a reprobate; and as he will have the good fortune to enter
the army at so early an age, by the time he is thirty, he may be a colonel
on full pay. Seriously, this is the best thing you can do with
him,--unless you have a living in your family."

The old gentleman was much discomposed by these letters, and by his son's
previous elopement. He could not, however, but foresee, that if he
resisted the boy's wishes, he was likely to have a troublesome time of it.
Scrape after scrape, difficulty following difficulty, might ensue, all
costing both anxiety and money. The present offer furnished him with a
fair excuse for ridding himself, for a long time to come, of further
provision for his offspring; and now growing daily more and more attached
to the indolent routine of solitary economies in which be moved, he was
glad of an opportunity to deliver himself from future interruption, and
surrender his whole soul to his favourite occupation.

At length, after a fortnight's delay and meditation, he wrote shortly to
Saville and his son; saying, after much reproach to the latter, that if
the commission could really be purchased at the sum specified he was