He was a man who was very good to a number of people, and spent almost as much money in being kind as if he had possessed extravagant children of his own. His sister Mary, for instance, had married a clergyman not very well off, and the natural result had followed. How they could have existed without Uncle John, much less how they could have stumbled into public schools, scholarships, and all the rest of it, would be difficult to tell, especially now in these days when a girl's schooling ought, we are told, to cost as much as a boy's. This latter is a grievance which must be apparent to the meanest capacity. Unless the girl binds herself by the most stringent vows _not_ to marry a poor curate or other penniless man the moment that you have completed her expensive education, I do not think she should in any case be permitted to go to Girton. It is all very well when the parents are rich or the girls have a sufficiency of their own. But to spend all that on a process which, instead of fructifying in other schools and colleges, or producing in life a highly accomplished woman, is to be lost at once and swallowed up in another nursery, is the most unprofitable of benefactions. This is what Mary Tatham's eldest girl had just done, almost before her bills at Newnham had been paid. A wedding present had, so to speak, been demanded from Uncle John at the end of the bayonet to show his satisfaction in the event which had taken all meaning out of his exertions for little Mary. He had given it indeed--in the shape not of a biscuit-box, which is what she would have deserved, but of a cheque--but he was not pleased. Neither was he pleased, as has been seen, by the proceedings of Elinor, who had slighted all his advice yet clung to himself in a way some women have. I do not know whether men expect you to be quite as much their friend as ever after they have rejected your counsel and taken their own (exactly opposite) way: but women do, and indeed I think expect you to be rather grateful that they have not taken amiss the advice which they have rejected and despised. This was Elinor's case. She hoped that John was ashamed of advising her to make her boy acquainted with his family and the fact of his father's existence, and that he duly appreciated the fact that she did not resent that advice; and then she expected from him the same attention to herself and her son as if the boy had been guided in his and not in her way. Thus it will be seen his friends and relations expected a very great deal from John.