himself, and quicker. Mr. Crimsworth made inquiries as to how I
lived, whether I got into debt--no, my accounts with my landlady
were always straight. I had hired small lodgings, which I
contrived to pay for out of a slender fund--the accumulated
savings of my Eton pocket-money; for as it had ever been
abhorrent to my nature to ask pecuniary assistance, I had early
acquired habits of self-denying economy; husbanding my monthly
allowance with anxious care, in order to obviate the danger of
being forced, in some moment of future exigency, to beg
additional aid. I remember many called me miser at the time, and
I used to couple the reproach with this consolation--better to be
misunderstood now than repulsed hereafter. At this day I had my
reward; I had had it before, when on parting with my irritated
uncles one of them threw down on the table before me a 5l. note,
which I was able to leave there, saying that my travelling
expenses were already provided for. Mr. Crimsworth employed Tim
to find out whether my landlady had any complaint to make on the
score of my morals; she answered that she believed I was a very
religious man, and asked Tim, in her turn, if he thought I had
any intention of going into the Church some day; for, she said,
she had had young curates to lodge in her house who were nothing
equal to me for steadiness and quietness. Tim was "a religious
man" himself; indeed, he was "a joined Methodist," which did not
(be it understood) prevent him from being at the same time an
engrained rascal, and he came away much posed at hearing this
account of my piety. Having imparted it to Mr. Crimsworth, that
gentleman, who himself frequented no place of worship, and owned
no God but Mammon, turned the information into a weapon of attack
against the equability of my temper. He commenced a series of
covert sneers, of which I did not at first perceive the drift,