He used to puzzle me altogether with his ways, and, 'pon my word, I was not sorry when he said he would go to India, for there was no saying how he might have turned out if he had stopped here.
He never could do anything like anybody else: nothing that he could have done would have surprised me.
"If he had told me that he intended to be a play actor, or a Jockey, or a private, or a book writer, I should not have been surprised.

Upon my word, it was rather a relief to me when he said, 'I have made up my mind to go into the East India Service, father.

I suppose you can get me a cadetship ?' At least that was an honorable profession; and I knew, anyhow, that when he once said 'I have made up my mind, father,' no arguments would move him, and that if I did not get him a cadetship he was perfectly capable of running away, going up to London, and enlisting in one of their white regiments." John Thorndyke's own remembrances were that his brother had always been good natured to him, that he had often told him long stories about Indian adventures, and that a short time before he went away, having heard that he had been unmercifully beaten by the schoolmaster at Reigate for some trifling fault, he had gone down to the town, and had so battered the man that the school had to be closed for a fortnight.
They had always kept up a correspondence.

When he received the news of his father's death George had written to him, begging him to go down to Reigate, and to manage the estate for him.
"Of course," he said, "you will draw its income as long as you are there.

I mayn't be back for another twenty years; one gets rich out here fast, what with plunder and presents and one thing and another, and it is no use to have money accumulating at home, so just live on the place as if it were your own, until I come home to turn you out." John had declined the offer.
"I am very well where I am," he wrote, "and the care of the estate would be a horrible worry to me; besides, I have just married, and if I ever have any children they would be brought up beyond their station.