“It is not a large one; but I know it will make a very great difference in your comfort, and it will be a great pleasure to me to know that you will be able to enter into what amusements are going on and not to look at every penny.  It makes all the difference in the world whether one has four and sixpence or nine shillings a day to live upon.  You wrote and told me of the handsome present Mr. Penfold made you at parting.  This, my boy, I should keep if I were you as a reserve, only to be touched in case of unexpected difficulties or needs.  No one can ever say when such needs may occur.  I hope you will not pain me by writing to say you don’t want this allowance, because nothing you can say will alter my determination to pay that allowance regularly every quarter into your agent’s hands; and it will be, of course, very much more pleasant to me to know that it is as much a pleasure to you to be helped by me as it is to me to help you, I have heard several times from Mrs. Withers; they are all well, and she asked me to send their remembrances to you when I write.  I do not give up all hope that the will may be found one of these days, but it is just as well that we should not build in the slightest upon it.”

Ralph’s reply came in due time, that is in about a fortnight afterward; for Mrs. Conway’s letter had first to go by coach to London, and then a two days’ journey by the mail to Liverpool, then by the sailing packet across to Dublin, and then down to Cork by coach.  He had already written expressing his regret at the news of Mr. Penfold’s death.

“My dear mother,” he began.  “It is awfully good of you to talk about making an allowance to me.  After what you say, of course I cannot think of refusing it, though I would do so if I thought the payment would in the slightest way inconvenience you.  But as you say that now I am away it will make something like that sum difference in your expenses, I must of course let you do as you like, and can only thank you very heartily for it.  But I could really have got on very well without it.  I fancy that a good many men in the regiment have nothing but their pay, and as they manage very well there is no reason I could not manage too.

“Of course in war times things are not kept up so expensively as they were before, and lots of men get commissions who would not have done so when the army was only half its present size, and was considered as a gentlemanly profession instead of a real fighting machine.  However, as you say, it is a great deal more pleasant having nine shilling a day to live on instead of four and sixpence.

“I am getting on capitally here.  Of course there is a lot of drill, and it is as much as I can do not to laugh sometimes, the sergeant, who is a fierce little man, gets into such wild rages over our blunders.