given it."

This speech was so like one of my father's--so naive an imitation of
that subtle reasoner's use of the rhetorical figure called Antanaclasis
(or repetition of the same words in a different sense)--that I laughed
and my mother smiled. But she smiled reverently, not thinking of the
Antanaclasis, as, laying her hand on Roland's arm, she replied in the
yet more formidable figure of speech called Epiphonema (or exclamation),
"Yet, with all your economy, you would have had us--"

"Tut!" cried my uncle, parrying the Epiphonema with a masterly
Aposiopesis (or breaking off); "tut! if you had done what I wished, I
should have had more pleasure for my money!"

My poor mother's rhetorical armory supplied no weapon to meet that
artful Aposiopesis; so she dropped the rhetoric altogether, and went
on with that "unadorned eloquence" natural to her, as to other great
financial reformers: "Well, Roland, but I am a good housewife, I assure
you, and--Don't scold; but that you never do;--I mean, don't look as if
you would like to scold. The fact is, that even after setting aside L100
a year for our little parties--"

"Little parties!--a hundred a year!" cried the Captain, aghast.

My mother pursued her way remorselessly,--"which we can well afford; and
without counting your half-pay, which you must keep for pocket-money and
your wardrobe and Blanche's,--I calculate that we can allow Pisistratus
L150 a year, which, with the scholarship he is to get, will keep him
at Cambridge" (at that, seeing the scholarship was as yet amidst the
Pleasures of Hope, I shook my head doubtfully), "and," continued my
mother, not heeding that sign of dissent, "we shall still have something
to lay by."

The Captain's face assumed a ludicrous expression of compassion and
horror; he evidently thought my mother's misfortunes had turned her
head.

His tormentor continued.

"For," said my mother, with a pretty calculating shake of her head, and
a movement of the right forefinger towards the five fingers of the left
hand, "L370,--the interest of Austin's fortune,--and L50 that we may
reckon for the rent of our house, make L420 a year. Add your L330 a year
from the farm, sheep-walk, and cottages that you let, and the total is
L750. Now, with all we get for nothing for our housekeeping, as I said
before, we can do very well with L500 a year, and indeed make a handsome
figure. So, after allowing Sisty L150, we still have L100 to lay by for
Blanche."