It is a cheap mode, after all, of providing for a reprobate; and as he will have the good fortune to enter the army at so early an age, by the time he is thirty, he may be a colonel on full pay.

Seriously, this is the best thing you can do with him,--unless you have a living in your family." The old gentleman was much discomposed by these letters, and by his son's previous elopement.

He could not, however, but foresee, that if he resisted the boy's wishes, he was likely to have a troublesome time of it.

Scrape after scrape, difficulty following difficulty, might ensue, all costing both anxiety and money.

The present offer furnished him with a fair excuse for ridding himself, for a long time to come, of further provision for his offspring; and now growing daily more and more attached to the indolent routine of solitary economies in which he moved, he was glad of an opportunity to deliver himself from future interruption, and surrender his whole soul to his favourite occupation.
At length, after a fortnight's delay and meditation, he wrote shortly to Saville and his son; saying, after much reproach to the latter, that if the commission could really be purchased at the sum specified he was willing to make a sacrifice, for which he must pinch himself, and conclude the business.