that you find late hours don't agree with you,
and that you have made up your mind to cut it altogether."

"That is all very well for you, Frank, and I will do you justice to say
that if you determined to do a thing, you would do it without minding
what any one said."

"Without minding what any one I did not care for, said," Frank
interrupted. "Certainly; why should I heed a bit what people I do not
care for say, so long as I feel that I am doing what is right."

"I wish I were as strong-willed as you are, Frank," Julian said rather
ruefully, "then I should not have to put up with being bullied by a
young brother."

"You are too good tempered, Julian," Frank said, almost angrily. "Here
are you, six feet high and as strong as a horse, and with plenty of
brain for anything, just wasting your life. Look at the position father
held here, and ask yourself how many of his old friends do you know.
Why, rather than go on as you are doing, I would enlist and go out to
the Peninsula and fight the French. That would put an end to all this
sort of thing, and you could come back again and start afresh. You will
have money enough for anything you like. You come into half father's
L16,000 when you come of age, and I have no doubt that you will have
Aunt's money."

"Why should I?" Julian asked in a more aggrieved tone than he had
hitherto used.

"Because you are her favourite, Julian, and quite right that you should
be. You have always been awfully good to her, and that is one reason why
I hate you to be out of an evening; for although she never says a word
against you, and certainly would not hear any one else do so, I tell you
it gives me the blues to see her face as she sits there listening for
your footsteps."

"It is a beastly shame, and I will give it up, Frank; honour bright, I
will."

"That is right, old fellow; I knew you would if you could only once peep
in through the window of an evening and see her face."

"As for her money," Julian went on, "if she does not divide it equally
between us, I shall, you may be sure."

"I sha'n't want it," Frank said decidedly. "You know I mean to go into
the army, and with the interest of my own money I shall have as much as
I shall possibly want, and if I had more it would only bother me, and do
me harm in my profession. With you it is just the other way. You are the
head of the family, and as Father's son ought to take a good place. You
could buy an estate and settle down on it