"When I married, Robert, I was only the second brother, and no settlement was made on your mother: I had nothing to settle. The post I had in London in what you young people are now pleased to call the red-tape office, brought me in six hundred a-year, and we married on that, to rub on as we best could. And I dare say we should have rubbed on very well," added Mr. Dalrymple, in a sort of parenthesis, "for our desires were simple, and we were not likely to go beyond our income. However, when you were about two years old, Moat Grange fell to me, through the death of my elder brother." "What was the cause of his death?" interrupted Robert. "He must have been a young man." "Eight-and-twenty only. It was young. I gave up my post in town, and we came to Moat Grange----" "But what did Uncle Claude die of?" asked Robert again. "I don't remember to have heard." "Never mind what. It was an unhappy death, and we have not cared to speak of it. Moat Grange is worth about two thousand a-year: and we have been doing wrong, in one respect, ever since we came to it, for we have put nothing by." "Why should you have put by, father?" "There! That is an exemplification of your random way of speaking and thinking. Moat Grange is entailed upon you, every shilling of it." "Well, it will be enough for me, with what I have," said Robert. "I hope it will. But it would have been anything but well had I died; for in that case your mother and sisters would have been beggars." "Oh, father!" "Yes; all would have lapsed to you. Let me go on. Claude Dalrymple left many debts behind him, some of them cruel ones--personal ones--we will not enter into that. I--moved by a chivalrous feeling perhaps, but which I and your mother have never repented of--took those personal debts upon me, and paid them off by degrees." "I should have done the same," cried impulsive Robert. "And the estate had of course to be kept up, for I would not have had it said that Moat Grange suffered by its change of owners, and your mother thought with me; so that altogether we had a struggle for it, and were positively less at our ease for ready-money here than we had been in our little household in London. When the debts were cleared off, and we had breathing time, I began to think of saving: but I am sorry to say it was only thought of; not done. The cost of educating you children increased as you grew older; Alice's illness came on and was a great and continued expense; and, what with one thing and another, we never did, or have, put by. Your expenses at college were enormous." "Were they?" returned Robert, indifferently. "Were they!" echoed Mr. Dalrymple, almost in sharp tones. "Do you forget that you also ran into debt there, like your uncle Claude?" "Not much, was it, sir?" cried Robert, deprecatingly, who remembered very little about the matter, beyond the fact that the bills had gone in to Moat Grange.