You might represent the town if you played your cards well.

Your poor dear father would have done so had he lived; so might you .-- Not if you marry a lady, however amiable, whom the country people won't meet .-- Well, well: it's a painful subject.

Let us change it, my boy." But if Major Pendennis changed the subject once he recurred to it a score of times in the day: and the moral of his discourse always was, that Pen was throwing himself away.
Now it does not require much coaxing or wheedling to make a simple boy believe that he is a very fine fellow.
Pen took his uncle's counsels to heart.

He was glad enough, we have said, to listen to his elder's talk.

The conversation of Captain Costigan became by no means pleasant to him, and the idea of that tipsy old father-in-law haunted him with terror.