He
kept no regular accounts, reasoning with himself--or, perhaps, I should
rather say persuading himself--that there was no great occasion for
regular accounts, when he had a steady income arising from his
profession, as well as the interest of a good sum of money left him by
his father; and when, living in his own house near a country town where
provisions were cheap, his expenditure for his small family--only one
child--could never amount to anything like his incomings from the above-
mentioned sources. But servants and horses, and choice wines and rare
fruit-trees, and a habit of purchasing any book or engraving that may
take the fancy, irrespective of the price, run away with money, even
though there be but one child. A year or two ago, Mr. Wilkins had been
startled into a system of exaggerated retrenchment--retrenchment which
only lasted about six weeks--by the sudden bursting of a bubble
speculation in which he had invested a part of his father's savings. But
as soon as the change in his habits, necessitated by his new economies,
became irksome, he had comforted himself for his relapse into his former
easy extravagance of living by remembering the fact that Ellinor was
engaged to the son of a man of large property: and that though Ralph was
only the second son, yet his mother's estate must come to him, as Mr.
Ness had already mentioned, on first hearing of her engagement.
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