uncle the three hundred pounds which Pritchett had placed to his
account. But he would not now be able to do this: his father lived
expensively; and even here, where Sir Lionel was now at home, George
paid more than his own share of the expense.

One of their chief subjects of conversation, that, indeed, which
Sir Lionel seemed to prefer to any other, was the ultimate disposal
of his brother's money. He perceived that George's thoughts on
this subject were by far too transcendental, that he was childishly
indifferent to his own interests, and that if not brought to a keener
sense of his own rights, a stronger feeling as to his position as
the only nephew of a very wealthy man, he might let slip through his
fingers a magnificent fortune which was absolutely within his reach.
So thinking, he detained his son near him for awhile, that he might,
if possible, imbue him with some spark of worldly wisdom.

He knew how useless it would be to lecture a young man like George
as to the best way in which he could play tuft-hunter to his uncle.
From such lectures George would have started away in disgust; but
something, Sir Lionel thought, might be done by tact, by _finesse_,
and a daily half-scornful badinage, skilfully directed towards the
proper subject. By degrees, too, he thought that George did listen to
him, that he was learning, that he might be taught to set his eyes
greedily on those mountains of wealth. And so Sir Lionel persevered
with diligence to the end.

"Say everything that is civil from me to my brother," said the
colonel, the day before George left him.

"Uncle George does not care much for civil speeches," said the other,
laughing.

"No, I know he does not; he'd think more of it if I could send home
a remittance by you to pay the bill; eh, George? But as I can't do
that, I may as well send a few civil words." Uncle George's bill had
gradually become a source of joke between the father and son. Sir
Lionel, at least, was accustomed to mention it in such a way that the
junior George could not help laughing; and though at first this had
gone against the grain of his feelings, by degrees he had become used
to it.

"He expects, I fancy, neither money nor civil words," said George the
younger.

"He will not, on that account, be the less pleased at getting either
the one or the other. Don't you believe everything that everybody
tells you in his own praise: when a man says that he does not like
flattery, and tha