"I do ensure you, Sir, that I have involved me for nought beyond the barest necessities of a gentleman." His father opened and perused the first bill. "`One dozen of shirts at four pound the piece.' Be those, my lad, among the barest necessities?" "Of a gentleman, Sir," said Jack. "Four pound, Brother! Thou must mean four shillings," cried Rachel. "'Tis writ four pound," calmly returned Sir Thomas. "Good lack Jack!" said Rachel, turning to her nephew. "Were there angels for buttons all the way down?" "The broidery, Aunt--the broidery!" returned Jack. "Four pound is a reasonable charge enough. Marry, I do ensure you, my sometime Lord of Leicester was wont to pay ten pound the piece for his shirts." "I would I had been his shirt-maker!" said Rachel. "'Twould have built up my fortune." "What wist thou touching broidery, Jack?" demanded Lady Enville, with her silvery laugh. "Go to!" said Sir Thomas, taking up the next bill. "`Five score of silk stockings, broidered, with golden clocks [Note 1], twenty-six and eight-pence the pair.'--Those be necessaries, belike, Jack?" "Assuredly, Sir. White, look you--a pair the day, or maybe two." "Ha!" said his father. "`Item, one short coat, guarded with budge [lambskin], and broidered in gold thread, 45 pounds.--Item, one long gown of tawny velvet, furred with pampilion [an unknown species of fur], and guarded with white lace, 66 pounds, 13 shillings, 4 pence.'-- Necessaries, Jack?" "Mercy preserve us!" ejaculated Rachel. "Good lack, Sir Thomas!--the lad must have gear!" urged his step-mother. Sir Thomas laid down the bills. "Be so good, Jack, as to tell me the full figures of these counts?" "Good sooth, Sir! I have not added them," replied Jack in a contemptuous tone. "A gentleman is ne'er good at reckoning." "He seems to be reasonable good at spending," said his father. "But how much, Jack, dost guess they may all come to?" "Really, Sir, I cannot say." "Go to--give a guess." "Marry--somewhere about five thousand pound, it may be." According to the equivalent value of money in the present day, Jack's debts amounted to about seventy-five thousand pounds. His father's yearly income was equal to about six thousand. "How lookest thou to pay this money, Jack?" asked Sir Thomas, in a tone of preternatural calmness which argued rather despair than lack of annoyance. "Well, Sir, there be two or three fashions of payment," returned Jack, airily. "If you cannot find the money--" "I cannot, in very deed, lad." "Good," answered Jack quite complacently. "Then--if I win not the monopoly--" "The monopoly would not pay thy debts under fifty years, Jack; not if thou gavest every penny thereof thereto, and hadst none fresh to pay. How about that, lad?" "Of course I must live like a gentleman, Sir," said Jack loftily. "Then the next way is to win the grant of a wardship."