'Sent down for indecent behaviour, eh? said Paul Pennyfeather's guardian. 'Well, thank God your poor father has been spared this disgrace. That's all I can say.
There was a hush in Onslow Square, unbroken except by Paul's guardian's daughter's gramophone playing Gilbert and Sullivan in her little pink boudoir at the top of the stairs.
'My daughter must know nothing of this, continued Paul's guardian.
There was another pause.
'Well, he resumed, 'you know the terms of your father's will. He left the sum of five thousand pounds, the interest of which was to be devoted to your education and the sum to be absolutely yours on your twenty‑first birthday. That, if I am right, falls in eleven months' time. In the event of your education being finished before that time, he left me with complete discretion to withhold this allowance should I not consider your course of life satisfactory. I do not think that I should be fulfilling the trust which your poor father placed in me if, in the present circumstances, I continued any allowance. Moreover, you will be the first to realize how impossible it would be for me to ask you to share the same home with my daughter.
'But what is to happen to me? said Paul.
'I think you ought to find some work, said his guardian thoughtfully. 'Nothing like it for taking the mind off nasty subjects.
'But what kind of work?
'Just work, good healthy toil. You have led too sheltered a life, Paul. Perhaps I am to blame. It will do you the world of good to face facts a bit ‑ look at life in the raw, you know. See things steadily and see them whole, eh? And Paul's guardian lit another cigar.
'Have I no legal right to any money at all? asked Paul.