proposing to me to make a party in our own favour against my brother's
rapacious views, as she used to call them: while I was for considering
the liberties he took of this sort, as the effect of a temporary
pleasantry, which, in a young man, not naturally good-humoured, I was
glad to see; or as a foible that deserved raillery, but no other
notice.

But when my grandfather's will (of the purport of which in my
particular favour, until it was opened, I was as ignorant as they) had
lopped off one branch of my brother's expectation, he was extremely
dissatisfied with me. Nobody indeed was pleased: for although every
one loved me, yet being the youngest child, father, uncles, brother,
sister, all thought themselves postponed, as to matter of right and
power [Who loves not power?]: And my father himself could not bear
that I should be made sole, as I may call it, and independent; for
such the will, as to that estate and the powers it gave,
(unaccountably, as they all said,) made me.

To obviate, therefore, every one's jealousy, I gave up to my father's
management, as you know, not only the estate, but the money bequeathed
me (which was a moiety of what my grandfather had by him at his death;
the other moiety being bequeathed to my sister); contenting myself to
take as from his bounty what he was pleased to allow me, without
desiring the least addition to my annual stipend. And then I hoped I
had laid all envy asleep: but still my brother and sister (jealous, as
now is evident, of my two uncles' favour of me, and of the pleasure I
had given my father and them by this act of duty) were every
now-and-then occasionally doing me covert ill offices: of which,
however, I took the less notice, when I was told of them, as I thought
I had removed the cause of their envy; and I imputed every thing of