Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools of sophistry. They
generally quarreled at night, and met on the neutral ground of the
shrubbery to be reconciled together the next morning. The bond of
intercourse thus curiously established between them was strengthened
on Mr. Vanstone's side by a hearty interest in his neighbor's
three sons--an interest by which those sons benefited all the more
importantly, seeing that one of the prejudices which their father had
outlived was a prejudice in favor of his own children.
"I look at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say, "with
a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their
birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in every
respect. The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming to
exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary ability.
My boys have been addle-headed from infancy. If I had any capital to
give them, I should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur
a grocer--those being the only human vocations I know of which are
certain to be always in request. As it is, I have no money to help them
with; and they have no brains to help themselves.
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