oy, 'we not only know this that I have
charged upon you, but we know more. It has not yet come to my sister's
knowledge that we have found it out, but we have. We had a plan, Mr
Headstone and I, for my sister's education, and for its being advised
and overlooked by Mr Headstone, who is a much more competent authority,
whatever you may pretend to think, as you smoke, than you could produce,
if you tried. Then, what do we find? What do we find, Mr Lightwood? Why,
we find that my sister is already being taught, without our knowing
it. We find that while my sister gives an unwilling and cold ear to our
schemes for her advantage--I, her brother, and Mr Headstone, the most
competent authority, as his certificates would easily prove, that could
be produced--she is wilfully and willingly profiting by other schemes.
Ay, and taking pains, too, for I know what such pains are. And so does
Mr Headstone! Well! Somebody pays for this, is a thought that naturally
occurs to us; who pays? We apply ourselves to find out, Mr Lightwood,
and we find that your friend, this Mr Eugene Wrayburn, here, pays. Then
I ask him what right has he to do it, and what does he mean by it, and
how comes he to be taking such a liberty without my consent, when I
am raising myself in the scale of society by my own exertions and Mr
Headstone's aid, and have no right to have any darkness cast upon my
prospects, or any imputation upon my respectability, through my sister?'

The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness,
made it a poor one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone, used to the little
audience of a school, and unused to the larger ways of men, showed a
kind of exultation in it.

'Now I tell Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' pursued the boy, forced into the use
of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing him in the first,
'that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with my sister, and
that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not to take it into his
head that I am afraid of my sister's caring for HIM--'

(As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the
feathery ash again.)

--'But I object to it, and that's enough. I am more important to my
sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her;
she knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects. Now I
understand all this very well, and so does Mr Headstone. My sister is an
excellent girl, but she has some romantic notions; not about