cunning, which, being mistaken by himself for ability, he
omits no occasion to display; and hence begins the petty warfare of
malice he wages against the world with all the spiteful ingenuity and
malevolence of a monkey.

I could trace through all my mother's letter the dexterity with which
Lord Dudley avoided committing himself respecting me, while his delicacy
regarding O'Grady's name was equally conspicuous to a certain extent. He
might have been excused if he bore no good-will to one or other of us;
but what could palliate his ingratitude to the Rooneys? What could
gloss over the base return he made them for all their hospitalities and
attention? for nothing was more clear than that the light in which he
represented them to my mother made them appear as low and intriguing
adventurers.

This was all bad enough; but what should I say of the threatened letter
to them? In what a position would it place _me_, before those who had
been uniformly kind and good-natured towards me! The very thought of
this nearly drove me to distraction, and I confess it was in no dutiful
mood I crushed up the epistle in my hand, and walked my room in an agony
of shame and vexation.

CHAPTER XVI. A MORNING IN TOWN

The morning after the receipt of the letter, the contents of which I
have in part made known to the reader, O'Grady called on me to accompany
him into the city.

'I am on a borrowing expedition, Jack,' cried he; 'and there's nothing
like having a new face with one. Cavendish, Hopeton, and the rest of
them, are so well known, it's of no use having them. But you, my boy,
you 're fresh; your smooth chin does not look like a protested bill,
and you've got a _degage_, careless manner, a kind of unsuspicious look
about you, a man never has, after a bailiff has given him an epaulette
of five dirty fingers.'

'But, Phil,' said I, 'if you really want money----'

'My very excellent young friend,' interrupted he, in a kind of sermon
voice, 'don't finish it, I beseech you; that is the very last thing in
the way of exchequer a gentleman is ever driven to--borrowing from a
friend. Heaven forbid! But even supposing the case that one's friend has
money, why, the presumption is, that he must have borrowed it himself;
so that you are sponging upon his ingenuity, not his income. Besides,
why riddle one's own ships, while there is an enemy before us to fight?
Please to remember the money-lenders, the usurers, the stockbroking
knaves a