So Sir Roger had to leave the huge Government works which he was then erecting on the southern coast, and hurry off to Berlin to see what could be done with young Hopeful.
The young Hopeful was by no means a fool; and in some matters was more than a match for his father.

Sir Roger, in his anger, threatened to cast him off without a shilling.

Louis, with mixed penitence and effrontery, reminded him that he could not change the descent of the title; promised amendment; declared that he had done only as do other young men of fortune; and hinted that the tutor was a strait-laced ass.

The father and the son returned together to Boxall Hill, and three months afterwards Mr Scatcherd set up for himself in London.
And now his life, if not more virtuous, was more crafty than it had been.

He had no tutor to watch his doings and complain of them, and he had sufficient sense to keep himself from absolute pecuniary ruin.
He lived, it is true, where sharpers and blacklegs had too often opportunities of plucking him; but, young as he was, he had been sufficiently long about the world to take care he was not openly robbed; and as he was not openly robbed, his father, in a certain sense, was proud of him.
Tidings, however, came--came at least in those last days--which cut Sir Roger to the quick; tidings of vice in the son which the father could not but attribute to his own example.