I expected it.

The results of your principle, Thompson!" "One of the very worst books of that abominable class!" exclaimed the old lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece, from which brazen Miss Random smiled bewitchingly out, as if she had no doubt of captivating Time and all his veterans on a fair field.

"Pah!" he shut her to with the energy he would have given to the office of publicly slapping her face; "from this day I diet him on bread and water--rescind his pocket-money!--How he could have got hold of such a book! How he--! And what ideas! Concealing them from me as he has done so cunningly! He trifles with vice! His mind is in a putrid state! I might have believed--I did believe--I might have gone on believing--my son Ripton to be a moral young man!" The old lawyer interjected on the delusion of fathers, and sat down in a lamentable abstraction.
"The lad has come out!" said Sir Austin.

"His adoption of the legal form is amusing.

He trifles with vice, true: people newly initiated are as hardy as its intimates, and a young sinner's amusements will resemble those of a confirmed debauchee.