ious bruiser,
old Hodge, who roared out, "Confound you, Newcome: I'll give it you for
upsetting your tea over my new trousers." He ran to the room where the
stranger was waiting for him. We will shut the door, if you please, upon
that scene.

If Clive had not been as fine and handsome a young lad as any in that
school or country, no doubt his fond father would have been just as well
pleased and endowed him with a hundred fanciful graces; but, in truth, in
looks and manners he was everything which his parent could desire. He was
the picture of health, strength, activity, and good-humour. He had a good
forehead shaded with a quantity of waving light hair; a complexion which
ladies might envy; a mouth which seemed accustomed to laughing; and a
pair of blue eyes that sparkled with intelligence and frank kindness. No
wonder the pleased father could not refrain from looking at him.

The bell rang for second school, and Mr. Popkinson, arrayed in cap and
gown, came in to shake Colonel Newcome by the hand, and to say he
supposes it was to be a holiday for Newcome that day. He said not a word
about Clive's scrape of the day before, and that awful row in the
bedrooms, where the lad and three others were discovered making a supper
off a pork pie and two bottles of prime old port from the Red Cow
public-house in Grey Friars Lane.

When the bell was done ringing, and all these busy little bees swarmed
into their hive, there was a solitude in the place. The Colonel and his
son walked the play-ground together, that gravelly flat, as destitute of
herbage as the Arabian desert, but, nevertheless, in the language of the
place, called the green. They walked the green, and they paced the
cloisters, and Clive showed his father his own name of Thomas Newcome
carved upon one of the arches forty years ago. As they talked, the boy
gave sidelong glances at his new friend, and wondered at the Colonel's
loose trousers, long moustaches, and yellow face. He looked very odd,
Clive thought, very odd and very kind, and like a gentleman, every inch
of him:--not like Martin's father, who came to see his son lately in
highlows, and a shocking bad hat, and actually flung coppers amongst the
boys for a scramble. He burst out a-laughing at the exquisitely ludicrous
idea of a gentleman of his fashion scrambling for coppers.

And now enjoining the boy to be ready against his return, the Colonel
whirled away in his cab to the city to shake hands with his brot