" I was very much
offended by the comparison of _my_ father, who was an officer and a
gentleman of rank, with _her_ father, who was a village publican; but
I should like to say, that I think now that I was wrong and Jane was
right. If her father gave up profit for principle, he _was_ like my
father, and like the ancestor we get the motto from, and like every
other honourable man, of any rank or any trade.
Every time I boasted in the nursery of my father being so honourable,
I always finished my saying, that that was why he had the word
Honourable before his name, as men in old times used to be called "the
Good" or "the Lion Heart." The nursemaids quite believed it, and I
believed it myself, till the first week I went to school.
It makes me hot all over to remember what I suffered that week, and
for long, afterwards. But I think it cured me of bragging, which is a
mean ungentlemanly habit, and of telling everybody everything about
myself and my relations, which is very weak-minded.
The second day I was there, one of the boys came up to me and said,
with a mock ceremony and politeness which unfortunately took me in,
"If I am not mistaken, sir, that esteemed lady, your mother, is an
Honourable?"
He was nearly five years older than I; his name was Weston; he had a
thin cadaverous face, a very large nose, and a very melancholy
expression.
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