owe your education. To him you owe it that, supposing you had lived, your are not now a horny-handed ploughboy, that you know how to use a pocket-handkerchief, and don't put your knife in your mouth."
Mr. Welsh thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood with legs apart looking scornfully at his nephew.
"Pray, Mr. Giles Inglett, how would you like to go back to potato pasty and cold boiled junk of bacon? To an early dinner, and swipes instead of claret? To getting your clothes at a slop-shop, instead of being fitted by a tailor? To being without books and magazines and reviews? Are you aware that you have earned not one of the luxuries or even comforts of civilized life? That they have come to you undeserved as does free Grace? Upon my word, you make my blood splutter! Shall I tell you what would have been the end of you had not Lord Lamerton come to the rescue? After you were ill you would have been cared for, or not cared for, after the fashion of common folk's children, and your mother's haphazard way of doing everything, allowed to get your feet wet, and stand in draughts, neglected one day, coddled the next, till your weak lungs gave way, and rapid consumption set in. Shall I tell you what would have been the course of Act II? Then you would have been mewed up in that dismal back bedroom at Chillacot, with the ultramarine wash on the walls, and the snipped, emerald-green, silver-paper fly trap suspended in the middle of the room, and the blistered mirror and the window looking out at a dripping rock, ugh! There you would have lain and coughed; and when an attempt was made to light the fire, the smoke would have refused to try the road up the chimney, and preferred that to your lungs; and when the window was opened to let the smoke out it would have let in the smell of the pigstye. When you wanted a book to enliven you, you would have been given Baxter's 'Saints' Rest' or a Methodist Missionary Magazine, and death itself would
