'The question is whether Cherry can trample on Underwood traditions, and keep house for a thousand a year where people expect three or four times the sum to be laid out.'
'I thought you reckoned things here at five hundred.'
'Hardly so much. We shall have to get our old bugbear, the superior assistant. Besides, Lance, now's your time. You must begin to get ready for Oxford at once.'
'I?' said Lance. 'No, thank you, Felix. Clement offered me the same last year, but my head wouldn't stand grinding nohow. No, if you stick to the old plank, so will I. I was more than half wishing it before, and ready to break my heart at leaving the organ to some stick of my Lady's choosing, only I didn't know what you might think due to the manes of the Underwoods.'
'The manes of the Underwoods must make up their minds to a good deal,' said Felix; 'but is it really true that you do not think yourself fit for study?'
'No, but music I can combine with the work here,' said Lance; 'and that would save the superior assistant, and you will be free to make a gentleman of Bear.'
'Yes, that must be done,' said Felix. 'Even Stoneborough will not do now. He is such a cocky little chap, that the only chance for him is to get him to a great public school, where this promotion will seem nothing to anybody.'
'My poor little Bear! I am very glad,' said Cherry. 'And he is still young enough; yet it hardly seems fair, when all his elders had to earn their own education.'
'Such as it was!' interjected Lance.
'Yes,' said Felix; 'and when I remember the sighs my father now and then let out about Eton or Harrow, I feel bound to give the benefit to the one who can take it; but I don't like the spending two hundred a year on that boy, and then leaving you, Lance, to all the drudgery, and a solitary house.'