to be Darby to such a pattern
little Joan, who would think me on the highway to perdition if she saw
_Bell's Life_ on the table, or heard me bet a pair of gloves.'

'You can't have any affection for her,' cried Phoebe, indignantly.

'Didn't I tell you she spoilt the taste of every other transaction of the
sort? And what am I going to do now? When she has not a halfpenny, and
I might marry anybody!'

'If you cared for her properly, you would have done it long before.'

'I'm a dutiful son,' he answered, in an indifferent voice, that provoked
Phoebe to say with spirit, 'I hope she does not care for you, after all.'

'Past praying for, kind sister. Sincerely I've been sorry for it; I
would have disbelieved it, but the more she turns away, the better I know
it; so you see, after all, I shall deserve to be ranked with your hero,
Bevil Acton.'

'Mervyn, you make me so angry that I can hardly answer! You boast of
what you think she has suffered for you all this time, and make light of
it!'

'It wasn't my fault if my poor father would send such an amiable youth
into a large family. Men with daughters should not take pupils. I did
my best to cure both her and myself, but I had better have fought it out
at once when she was younger and prettier, and might have been more
conformable, and not so countrified, as you'll grow, Phoebe, if you stay
rusting here, nursing my mother and reading philosophy with Miss
Fennimore. If you set up to scold me, you had better make things easy
for me.'

Phoebe thought for a few moments, and then said, 'I see plainly what you
ought to do, but I cannot understand that this makes it proper to ask my
mother to give up her own house, that she was born to. I suppose you
would call it childish to propose your living with us; but we could
almost form two establishments.'

'My dear child, Cecily would go and devote herself to my mother. I
should never have any good out of her, and she would get saddled for life
with Maria.'

'Maria is my charge,' said Phoebe, coldly.

'And what will your husband say to that?'

'He shall never be my husband unless I have the means of making her
happy.'

'Ay, there would be a frenzy of mutual generosity, and she would be left
to us. No; I'm not going to set up housekeeping with Maria for an
ingredient.'

'There is the Underwood.'

'Designed by nature for a dowager-house. That would do very well for you
and my mother, though Cheltenham or Brighton