Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/54

 school bill was higher than usual, and after paying it, I had not a guinea to spare--obliged to come here where they lodge and feed me for nothing; the boy's uncle on the mother's side--respectable man in business--kindly takes him home for the holidays; but did not ask me, because his wife--and I don't blame her--thinks I'm too wild for a City clerk's sober household.'

"I asked Willy Losely what he meant to do with his son, and hinted that I might get the boy a commission in the army without purchase.

"'No,' said Willy. 'I know what it is to set up for a gentleman on the capital of a beggar. It is to be a shuttlecock between discontent and temptation. I would not have my lost wife's son waste his life as I have done. He would be more spoiled, too, than I have been. The handsomest boy you ever saw-and bold as a lion. Once in that set' (pointing over his shoulder towards some of our sporting comrades, whose loud laughter every now and then reached our ears)--'once in that set, he would never be out of it--fit for nothing. I swore to his mother on her death-bed that I would bring him up to avoid my errors--that he should be no hanger-on and led-captain! Swore to her that he should be reared according to his real station--the station of his mother's kin--(I have no station)--and if I can but see him an honest British trader--respectable, upright, equal to the highest--because no rich man's dependant, and no poor man's jest--my ambition will be satisfied. And now you understand, sir, why my boy is not here.' You would say a father who spoke thus had a man's honest stuff in him. Eh, Lionel!"

"Yes, and a true gentleman's heart, too!"

"So I thought; yet I fancied I knew the world! After that conversation, I quitted our host's roof, and only once or twice afterwards, at country-houses, met William Losely again. To say truth, his chief patrons and friends were not exactly in my set. But your father continued to see Willy pretty often. They took a great fancy to each other. Charlie, you know, was jovial--fond of private theatricals, too; in short, they became great allies. Some years after, as ill-luck would have it, Charles Haughton, while selling off his Middlesex property, was in immediate want of L1,200. He could get it on a bill, but not without security. His bills were already rather down in the