Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

14. CHAPTER XIV: MR WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN LONDON (continued)

'I've told her that I would be her brother, and that as long as I had a shilling she should never want sixpence. And I mean it. And as for what you say about romance and repenting it, that simply comes from your being a lawyer.'

'Thank ye, Will.'

'If one goes to a chemist, of course one gets physic, and has to put up with the bad smells.'

'Thank you again.'

'But the chemist may be a very good sort of fellow at home all the same, and have a cupboard full of sweetmeats and a garden full of flowers. However, the thing is done as far as I am concerned, and I can almost find it in my heart to be sorry that Clara has got this driblet of money. Fifteen hundred pounds I It would keep her out of the workhouse, and that is about all.'

'If you knew how many ladies in her position would think that the heavens had rained wealth upon them if some one would give them fifteen hundred pounds!'

'Very well. At any rate I won't take it away from her. And now I want you to tell me something else. Do you remember a fellow we used to know named Berdmore?'

'Philip Berdmore?'

'He may have been Philip, or Daniel, or Jeremiah, for anything I know. But the man I mean was very much given to taking his liquor freely.'

'That was Jack Berdmore, Philip's brother. Oh yes, I remember him. He's dead now. He drank himself to death at last, out in India.'

'He was in the army?'

'Yes and what a pleasant fellow he was at times! I see Phil constantly, and Phil's wife, but they never speak of Jack.'