Lord Kilgobbin by Charles James Lever
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page 16 of 791 (02%)
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with these people, I must at least seem to live like them. I am received as
the son of a man of condition and property, and you want to bound my habits by those of my chum, Joe Atlee, whose father is starving somewhere on the pay of a Presbyterian minister. Even Joe himself laughs at the notion of gauging my expenses by his. 'If this is to go on--I mean if you intend to persist in this plan--be frank enough to say so at once, and I will either take pupils, or seek a clerkship, or go off to Australia; and I care precious little which of the three. 'I know what a proud thing it is for whoever manages the revenue to come forward and show a surplus. Chancellors of the Exchequer make great reputations in that fashion; but there are certain economies that lie close to revolutions; now don't risk this, nor don't be above taking a hint from one some years older than you, though he neither rules his father's house nor metes out his pocket-money.' Such, and such like, were the epistles she received from time to time, and though frequency blunted something of their sting, and their injustice gave her a support against their sarcasm, she read and thought over them in a spirit of bitter mortification. Of course she showed none of these letters to her father. He, indeed, only asked if Dick were well, or if he were soon going up for that scholarship or fellowship--he did not know which, nor was he to blame--'which, after all, it was hard on a Kearney to stoop to accept, only that times were changed with us! and we weren't what we used to be'--a reflection so overwhelming that he generally felt unable to dwell on it. |
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