‘No, Dick, that means worse and worse! Now, I am in the process of reformation. The natural selection, however, where honesty is in the series, is a slow proceeding, and the organic changes are very complicated. As I know, however, you attach value to the effect you produce in that coat, I’ll go and recover it. I shall not need Terence or Juvenal till we come back, and I’ll leave them in the avuncular hands till then.’ ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed of these miserable straits.’ ‘I am very much ashamed of the world that imposes them on me. I’m thoroughly ashamed of that public in lacquered leather, that sees me walking in broken boots. I’m heartily ashamed of that well-fed, well-dressed, sleek society, that never so much as asked whether the intellectual-looking man in the shabby hat, who looked so lovingly at the spiced beef in the window, had dined yet, or was he fasting for a wager?’ ‘There, don’t carry away that newspaper; I want to read over that pleasant paragraph again!’ CHAPTER XII THE JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY The two friends were deposited at the Moate station at a few minutes after midnight, and their available resources amounting to something short of two shillings, and the fare of a car and horse to Kilgobbin being more than three times that amount, they decided to devote their small balance to purposes of refreshment, and then set out for the castle on foot. ‘It is a fine moonlight; I know all the short cuts, and I want a bit of walking besides,’ said Kearney; and though Joe was of a self-indulgent temperament, and would like to have gone to bed after his supper and trusted to the chapter of accidents to reach Kilgobbin by a conveyance some time, any time, he had to yield his consent and set out on the road. ‘The fellow who comes with the letter-bag will fetch over our portmanteau,’ said Dick, as they started. ‘I wish you’d give him directions to take charge of me, too,’ said Joe, who felt very indisposed to a long walk. ‘I like _you_,’ said Dick sneeringly; ‘you are always telling me that you are the sort of fellow for a new colony, life in the bush, and the rest of it, and when it conies to a question of a few miles’ tramp on a bright night in June, you try to skulk it in every possible way. You’re a great humbug, Master Joe.’ ‘And you a very small humbug, and there lies the difference between us. The combinations in your mind are so few, that, as in a game of only three cards, there is no skill in the playing; while in my nature, as in that game called tarocco, there are half-a-dozen packs mixed up together, and the address required to play them is considerable.’ ‘You have a very satisfactory estimate of your own abilities, Joe.’ ‘And why not? If a clever fellow didn’t know he was clever, the opinion of the world on his superiority would probably turn his brain.’ ‘And what do you say if his own vanity should do it?’ ‘There is really no way of explaining to a fellow like you--’