I got him in with some trouble, and he has fallen asleep.

I thought this would be the explanation of his absence! No stones dressed for Miller Kench, the great wheel of the saw-mills waiting for new float-boards, even the poor folk not able to get their waggons wheeled.' 'What _is_ the use of poring over this!' said the younger, shutting up Donnegan's _Lexicon_ with a slap.

'O if we had only been able to keep mother's nine hundred pounds, what we could have done!' 'How well she had estimated the sum necessary! Four hundred and fifty each, she thought.

And I have no doubt that we could have done it on that, with care.' This loss of the nine hundred pounds was the sharp thorn of their crown.
It was a sum which their mother had amassed with great exertion and self- denial, by adding to a chance legacy such other small amounts as she could lay hands on from time to time; and she had intended with the hoard to indulge the dear wish of her heart--that of sending her sons, Joshua and Cornelius, to one of the Universities, having been informed that from four hundred to four hundred and fifty each might carry them through their terms with such great economy as she knew she could trust them to practise.

But she had died a year or two before this time, worn out by too keen a strain towards these ends; and the money, coming unreservedly into the hands of their father, had been nearly dissipated.