"What am I to live on, my dear fellow?"
"Like all good nephews, live on your uncle. Besides, you will have your fellowship; live on that, as I do."
"You have more than your fellowship; and as for my uncle, to tell you the truth, I have no fancy for living on him. I am not quite sure that he doesn't mean me to think that it's charity. However, I shall have the matter out with him now."
"Have the matter out with him!—and charity! What an ass you are! An uncle is just the same as a father."
"My uncle is not the same to me as my father."
"No; and by all accounts it's lucky for you that he is not. Stick to your uncle, my dear fellow, and come up to London. The ball will be at your foot."
"Did you ever read Marryat's novel, Harcourt?"
"What, Peter Simple?"
"No, that other one: I think of going out as another Japhet in search of a father. I have a great anxiety to know what mine's like. It's fourteen years now since I saw him."
"He is at Teheran, isn't he?"