'Exactly what makes me suspicious of his coming the disinterested over me. There's something behind! He is running into debt and destruction among that precious crew about the hospitals.' 'Harry saw nothing wrong, and thought his friends in good style.' 'Every one is in good style with Harry, happy fellow! He is no more a judge than a child of six years old--carries too much sunshine to see shades.' 'A lieutenant in the navy can hardly be the capital officer that our Harry is without some knowledge of men and discipline.' 'I grant you, on his own element; but on shore he goes about in his holiday spectacles, and sees a bird of paradise in every cock-sparrow.' 'Isn't _there_ a glass house that can sometimes make a swan?' said Ethel, slyly touching her father's spectacles; 'but with you both, there's always a something to attract the embellishing process; and between Harry and Aubrey, Dr. Spencer and Sir Matthew, we could hardly fail to have heard of anything amiss.' 'I don't like it.' 'Then it is hard,' said Ethel, with spirit. 'So steady as he has always been, he ought to have the benefit of a little trust.' 'He was never like the others; I don't know what to be at with him! I should not have minded but for that palaver about elder brothers.' Defend as Ethel might, it was still with a misgiving lest disappointment should have taken a wrong course. It was hard to trust where correspondence was the merest business scrap, and neither Christmas nor the sister's marriage availed to call Tom home; and though she had few fears as to dissipation, she did dread hardening and ambition, all the more since she had learnt that Sir Matthew Fleet was affording to him a patronage unprecedented from that quarter.