Harry himself for his part was not very grateful to Uncle Henry for his education. He would rather have been at home riding the colts, in the middle of all the fun. And he was not very fond of the education, any more than of the old man who gave it to him. He saw the disadvantages much more than the advantages of his position, as most people, and especially most young people, do. He had no fervid desire for learning, though his mother thought so; and to be as quiet as a mouse in that carefully arranged bachelor’s house was not half so pleasant as rushing in and out after his own fancy at home. He obeyed while he was a boy, but he was not grateful; and when he began to be a young man and the end of his studies approached, he was neither grateful nor obedient. He went in for all the sports in the neighbourhood, and persistently, though without any temper, defied his uncle. The result was that instead of being sent to Cambridge and made a scholar of and Uncle Henry’s avowed heir, which was all on the cards at one time, Harry was placed in the office in Liverpool where Uncle Henry had made his money. It was “a fine opening,” the old man said; but it did not much please anybody concerned. Mrs. Joscelyn felt as if she had tumbled from the top of the stairs to the bottom when she heard that all her hopes were to come to nothing better than this. And Harry himself who had begun to be proud of his education, though he did not love it, went about with a very grave countenance, furtively examining the faces of all concerned, that he might see what hope there was of an alteration in his fate. But his father had too many sons to quarrel with any provision for the youngest of them, and his mother had no power whatever, and there was nobody else who could help him. So he went to Liverpool at last, notwithstanding his own and his mother’s reluctance, and once there soon began to appreciate the advantage of his liberty and an income of his own. He had been frugally bred, and had never known what it was to have money before. His income seemed a fortune at first, but after a while Harry did not consider it in this light; and to tell the truth his application to his father for funds to push his fortune, to get advancement and a partnership, meant also a something, a little margin to pay sundry debts which his inexperience had been beguiled into, and which appalled him as soon as he had discovered that his income was less inexhaustible than he thought; and he had come home for his yearly holiday with the determination, by hook or by crook, to get this change in his position effected, and to be done with debt for ever and ever.