What could you--what could any young girl--know of the requirements of a man going out into the best society of a capital?
To derive any benefit from associating with these people, I must at least seem to live like them.

I am received as the son of a man of condition and property, and you want to bound my habits by those of my chum, Joe Atlee, whose father is starving somewhere on the pay of a Presbyterian minister.

Even Joe himself laughs at the notion of gauging my expenses by his.
'If this is to go on--I mean if you intend to persist in this plan--be frank enough to say so at once, and I will either take pupils, or seek a clerkship, or go off to Australia; and I care precious little which of the three.
'I know what a proud thing it is for whoever manages the revenue to come forward and show a surplus.

Chancellors of the Exchequer make great reputations in that fashion; but there are certain economies that lie close to revolutions; now don't risk this, nor don't be above taking a hint from one some years older than you, though he neither rules his father's house nor metes out his pocket-money.' Such, and such like, were the epistles she received from time to time, and though frequency blunted something of their sting, and their injustice gave her a support against their sarcasm, she read and thought over them in a spirit of bitter mortification.

Of course she showed none of these letters to her father.