'Finally, she adjures you to consider, that if you still persevere to consume your time in wilful negligence, to bury all thought in idle gaiety, and to act without either reflection or principle, the career of faults which begins but in unthinking folly, will terminate in shame, in guilt, and in ruin! And though such a declension of all good, must involve your family in your affliction, your disgrace, she bids me say, will ultimately fall but where it ought; since your own want of personal sensibility to the horror of your conduct, will neither harden nor blind any human being besides yourself. This is all.' 'And enough too,' cried he, reddening: 'I am a very wretch!--I believe that--though I am sure I can't tell how; for I never intend any harm, never think, never dream of hurting any mortal! But as to study--I must own to you, I hate it most deucedly. Anything else--if my mother had but exacted any thing else--with what joy I would have shewn my obedience!--If she had ordered me to be horse-ponded, I do protest to you, I would not have demurred.' 'How always you run into the ridiculous!' cried Camilla. 'I was never so serious in my life; not that I should like to be horse-ponded in the least, though I would submit to it for a punishment, and out of duty: but then, when it was done, it would be over: now the deuce of study is, there is no end of it! And it does so little for one! one can go through life so well without it! There is not above here and there an old codger that asks one a question that can bring it into any play. And then, a turn upon one's heel, or looking at one's watch, or wondering at one's short memory, or happening to forget just that one single passage, carries off the whole in two minutes, as completely as if one had been working one's whole life to get ready for the assault. And pray, now, tell me, how can it be worth one's best days, one's gayest hours, the very flower of one's life--all to be sacrificed to plodding over musty grammars and lexicons, merely to cut a figure just for about two minutes once or twice in a year?' The sisters, brought up with an early reverence for learning, as forming a distinguished part of the accomplishments of their father, could not subscribe to this argument. But they laughed; and that was ever sufficient for Lionel, who, though sincerely, in private, he loved and honoured his father, never bestowed upon him one voluntary moment that frolic or folly invited elsewhere. Lavinia and Camilla, perfectly relieved now from all fears for their brother, repaired to the study of their father, anxious to endeavour to chear him, and to accelerate a meeting and reconciliation for Lionel; but they found him desirous to be alone, though kindly, and unsolicited, he promised to admit his son before dinner.