Seeing me treated like a child, and put down like a fool, HE plucks up a heart and has a fling at a fellow that he thinks--and may well think too--hasn't a grain of spirit.

But he's mistaken, as I'll show him, and as I'll show all of you before long.' 'Does the boy know what he's a saying of!' cried the astonished John Willet.
'Father,' returned Joe, 'I know what I say and mean, well--better than you do when you hear me.

I can bear with you, but I cannot bear the contempt that your treating me in the way you do, brings upon me from others every day.

Look at other young men of my age.

Have they no liberty, no will, no right to speak?
Are they obliged to sit mumchance, and to be ordered about till they are the laughing-stock of young and old?
I am a bye-word all over Chigwell, and I say--and it's fairer my saying so now, than waiting till you are dead, and I have got your money--I say, that before long I shall be driven to break such bounds, and that when I do, it won't be me that you'll have to blame, but your own self, and no other.' John Willet was so amazed by the exasperation and boldness of his hopeful son, that he sat as one bewildered, staring in a ludicrous manner at the boiler, and endeavouring, but quite ineffectually, to collect his tardy thoughts, and invent an answer.