My father
didn't believe a word of it. It was the old story. I must be peculiar
at any price. I must have something new to amuse me, and be unlike the
rest of the family. It was always the same. For years I had found more
satisfaction from the conversation of a man who had spent ten years of
his life in the hulks than from that of my own father. Then this Indian
Colonel had taken my fancy, and it had made him sick to see the
womanish--he could call it no better, the _weak-womanish_--way in which
I worshipped him. If I were a daughter instead of a son, my caprices
would distress and astonish him less. He could have sent me to my
mother, and my mother might have sent me to my needle. In a son, from
whom he looked for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was
painful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of
candour--(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of the
indictment)--these were my besetting sins, and would lead me into
serious trouble. This new fad, just, too, when he had made most
favourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry's office as
the first step in a prosperous career.
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