that he had been so confident, merely because of his faith in the wisest and most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my intellectual resources.

The latter, I believe, he considered a match for any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.

‘What can we do, Trotwood?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘There’s the Memorial-’

‘To be sure there is,’ said I. ‘But all we can do just now, Mr. Dick, is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see that we are thinking about it.’

He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if I should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to recall him by some of those superior methods which were always at my command.