relations! For then his brother's bow must have given
the finishing stroke to what the ill-humour of his mother
and sister would have begun. But while she wondered
at the difference of the two young men, she did not find
that the emptiness of conceit of the one, put her out
of all charity with the modesty and worth of the other.
Why they WERE different, Robert exclaimed to her himself
in the course of a quarter of an hour's conversation;
for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme
GAUCHERIE which he really believed kept him from mixing
in proper society, he candidly and generously attributed it
much less to any natural deficiency, than to the misfortune
of a private education; while he himself, though probably
without any particular, any material superiority
by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school,
was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man.

"Upon my soul," he added, "I believe it is nothing more;
and so I often tell my mother, when she is grieving
about it. 'My dear Madam,' I always say to her, 'you must
make yourself easy. The evil is now irremediable,
and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would
you be persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your
own judgment, to place Edward under private tuition,
at the most critical time of his life? If you had only sent
him to Westminster as well as myself, instead of sending
him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been prevented.'
This is the way in which I always consider the matter,
and my mother is perfectly convinced of her error."