He thinks he's a gentleman because he can do nothing; and to save himself from the disgrace of incapacity, 'he'd like to be a rebel.' If Mr.Tom McKeown's reasonings were at times somewhat abstruse and hard of comprehension to his friend Kearney, it was not that he did not bestow on them due thought and reflection; and over this private and strictly confidential page he had now meditated for hours.
'Bad luck to me,' cried he at last, 'if I see what he's at.

If I'm to tell the boy he is ruined to-day, and to-morrow to announce to him that he is a lord--if I'm to threaten him now with poverty, and the morning after I'm to send him to Halle, or Hell, or wherever it is--I'll soon be out of my mind myself through bare confusion.

As to having him "down," he's low enough; but so shall I be too, if I keep him there.

I'm not used to seeing my house uncomfortable, and I cannot bear it.' Such were some of his reflections, over his agent's advice; and it may be imagined that the Machiavellian Mr.McKeown had fallen upon a very inapt pupil.
It must be owned that Mathew Kearney was somewhat out of temper with his son even before the arrival of this letter.

While the 'swells,' as he would persist in calling the two English visitors, were there, Dick took no trouble about them, nor to all seeming made any impression on them.