No! He just looked at her curiously and held his tongue.

But the words were not forgotten.

They roused in him a sense of injustice.

For in the ordinary well-to-do circle, in which the Thresks lived, boys were expected to be an expense to their parents; and after all, as he argued, he had not asked to be born.

And so after much brooding, there sprang up in him an antagonism to his family and a fierce determination to owe to it as little as he could.
There was a full share of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but the antagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and at an age when other lads were vaguely dreaming themselves into Admirals and Field-Marshals and Prime-Ministers Henry Thresk, content with lower ground, was mapping out the stages of a good but perfectly feasible career.