JACK. Is it? ain’t it? Ah! after knocking about the world for ten years, you don’t know how happy a fellow feels in getting back to his aunt and having his cheeks pulled about. By-the-bye, aunt, what d’ye think?—what with my prize-money, the sale of my commission, and one thing and the other, I find I’ve managed to scrape together a matter of £10,000.
MRS. T. Ten thousand? that’s a large sum of money, my dear.
JACK. An awful lot, isn’t it? the puzzle is, what I’m to do with it.
MRS. T. My advice is, invest in land; they say “Stick to the land, and the land will stick to you.”
JACK. I know mud will—at least it did in the Crimea.
MRS. T. My dear Jack, do be serious! Now that you are worth £500 a year—
JACK. Five hundred a year! I shall never spend the half of it.
MRS. T. Then get a wife to help you.
JACK. A wife! me? what for?—why, my dear aunt, here are no end of clever people complaining of the over-population of the country, and you want me to— (Shaking his head.) No, no!