to entering on such matters, and give you a
perfectly plain and candid answer, if you will do me the favour to shut
the door.'

Edward having obeyed him, he took an elegant little knife from his
pocket, and paring his nails, continued:

'You have to thank me, Ned, for being of good family; for your mother,
charming person as she was, and almost broken-hearted, and so forth, as
she left me, when she was prematurely compelled to become immortal--had
nothing to boast of in that respect.'

'Her father was at least an eminent lawyer, sir,' said Edward.

'Quite right, Ned; perfectly so. He stood high at the bar, had a great
name and great wealth, but having risen from nothing--I have
always closed my eyes to the circumstance and steadily resisted its
contemplation, but I fear his father dealt in pork, and that his
business did once involve cow-heel and sausages--he wished to marry his
daughter into a good family. He had his heart's desire, Ned. I was a
younger son's younger son, and I married her. We each had our object,
and gained it. She stepped at once into the politest and best circles,
and I stepped into a fortune which I assure you was very necessary to my
comfort--quite indispensable. Now, my good fellow, that fortune is among
the things that have been. It is gone, Ned, and has been gone--how old
are you? I always forget.'

'Seven-and-twenty, sir.'

'Are you indeed?' cried his father, raising his eyelids in a languishing
surprise. 'So much! Then I should say, Ned, that as nearly as I
remember, its skirts vanished from human knowledge, about eighteen or
nineteen years ago. It was about that time when I came to live in these
chambers (once your grandfather's, and bequeathed by that extremely
respectable person to me), and commenced to live upon an inconsiderable
annuity and my past reputation.'

'You are jesting with me, sir,' said Edward.

'Not in the slightest degree, I assure you,' returned his father with
great composure. 'These family topics are so extremely dry, that I am
sorry to say they don't admit of any such relief. It is for that reason,
and because they have an appearance of business, that I dislike them so
very much. Well! You know the rest. A son, Ned, unless he is old enough
to be a companion--that is to say, unless he is some two or three and
twenty--is not the kind of thing to have about one. He is a restraint
upon his father, his father is a restraint upon him, and they make each
other mutual