What do you advise ?' Evan stared a moment at the wretched object, whose dream of meeting a beneficent old gentleman had brought him to be the sport of a cynical farceur.

He had shivers on his own account, seeing something of himself magnified, and he loathed the fellow, only to feel more acutely what a stigma may be.
'It 's a case I can't advise in,' he said, as gently as he could.

'I should be off the grounds in a hurry.' 'And then I'm where I was before I met the horrid old brute!' Raikes moaned.
'I told him over a pint of port-and noble stuff is that Aurora port!--I told him--I amused him till he was on the point of bursting--I told him I was such a gentleman as the world hadn't seen--minus money.

So he determined to launch me.

He said I should lead the life of such a gentleman as the world had not yet seen--on that simple condition, which appeared to me childish, a senile whim; rather an indulgence of his.' Evan listened to the tribulations of his friend as he would to those of a doll--the sport of some experimental child.