Y. W. How can I? This confounded hump of mine is such a burden to my back that it presses me down here in the dirt and diseases of Covent Garden, the low suburbs of pleasure. Curst fortune! I am a younger brother, and yet cruelly deprived of my birthright, a handsome person; seven thousand a year, in a direct line, would have straightened my back to some purpose. But I look, in my present circumstances, like a branch of another kind, grafted only upon the stock which makes me look so crooked.
Rich. Come, come, ’tis no misfortune, your father is so as well as you.
Y. W. Then why should not I be a lord as well as he? Had I the same title to the deformity I could bear it.
Rich. But how does my lord bear the absence of your twin-brother?
Y. W. My twin-brother? Ay, ’twas his crowding me that spoiled my shape, and his coming half-an-hour before me that ruined my fortune. My father expelled me from his house some two years ago, because I would have persuaded him that my twin-brother was a bastard. He gave me my portion, which was about fifteen hundred pounds, and I have spent two thousand of it already. As for my brother, he don’t care a farthing for me.
Rich. Why so, pray?
Y. W. A very odd reason—because I hate him.
Rich. How should he know that?
Y. W. Because he thinks it reasonable it should be so.
Rich. But did your actions ever express any malice to him?