Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle,
that he should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he
should gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds into a horse
that would fetch a hundred at any moment--"judgment" being always
equivalent to an unspecified sum in hard cash. And in any case,
even supposing negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine,
Fred had always (at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource,
so that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous superfluity
about them. Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket,
Fred had only a vague notion: was not trade elastic? And would not
the deficiencies of one year be made up for by the surplus of another?
The Vincys lived in an easy profuse way, not with any new ostentation,
but according to the family habits and traditions, so that the
children had no standard of economy, and the elder ones retained some
of their infantine notion that their father might pay for anything if
he would. Mr. Vincy himself had expensive Middlemarch habits--spent
money on coursing, on his cellar, and on dinner-giving, while mamma
had those running accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful
sense of getting everything one wants without any question of payment.
But it was in the nature of fathers, Fred knew, to bully one about
expenses: there was always a little storm over his extravagance if he
had to disclose a debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within doors.
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