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Lord Kilgobbin by Charles James Lever
page 16 of 791 (02%)
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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