The boy had taken the notes with delighted thanks indeed, but with that tranquil and unprotesting readiness with which spoiled childishness or unhesitating selfishness accepts gifts and sacrifices from another's generosity, which have been so general that they have ceased to have magnitude.

As his brother passed him, however, he caught his hand a second, and looked up with a mist before his eyes, and a flush half of shame, half of gratitude, on his face.
"What a trump you are!--how good you are, Bertie!" Cecil laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"First time I ever heard it, my dear boy," he answered, as he lounged down the staircase, his chains clashing and jingling; while, pressing his helmet on to his forehead and pulling the chin scale over his mustaches, he sauntered out into the street where his charger was waiting.
"The deuce!" he thought, as he settled himself in his stirrups, while the raw morning wind tossed his white plume hither and thither.

"I never remembered!--I don't believe I've left myself money enough to take Willon and Rake and the cattle down to the Shires to-morrow.

If I shouldn't have kept enough to take my own ticket with!--that would be no end of a sell.

On my word I don't know how much there's left on the dressing-table.