t above seven
feet at the longest, it is astonishing what a quantity of room that
species of arbor mortis takes in the growing! However, Pisistratus, to
return to your request, I will think it over, and talk to Trevanion."

"Or rather to Lady Ellinor," said I, imprudently: my mother slightly
shivered, and took her hand from mine. I felt cut to the heart by the
slip of my own tongue.

"That, I think, your mother could do best," said my father, dryly, "if
she wants to be quite convinced that somebody will see that your shirts
are aired. For I suppose they mean you to lodge at Trevanion's."

"Oh, no!" cried my mother; "he might as well go to college then. I
thought he was to stay with us,--only go in the morning, but, of course,
sleep here."

"If I know anything of Trevanion," said my father, "his secretary will
be expected to do without sleep. Poor boy! you don't know what it is
you desire. And yet, at your age, I--" my father stopped short. "No!" he
renewed abruptly, after a long silence, and as if soliloquizing,--"no;
man is never wrong while he lives for others. The philosopher who
contemplates from the rock is a less noble image than the sailor who
struggles with the storm. Why should there be two of us? And could he be
an alter ego, even if I wished it? Impossible!" My father turned on his
chair, and laying the left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as
he bent down to look me full in the face: "But, Pisistratus, will you
promise me always to wear the saffron bag?"

CHAPTER VII.

I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the
Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to
decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered
by Trevanion: "I promise you one thing,--he shall never be idle!"

Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he
understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most prone,
when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely
on the world of men. I was naturally so joyous that I should have made
college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a
phthisis.

And my father, too, was right that though I could study, I was not meant
for a student.

After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to spare; if the
experiment failed, a year's delay would not necessarily be a year's
loss.

I am ensconced, then, at Mr. Trevanion's; I have been there s