ry day."

When these letters were received by the good Colonel in India we can well
imagine the joy that warmed his fond heart. He, himself, was comfortably
settled in the only place which would ever be home to him,--his son, the
idol of his heart, was with Ethel, his darling. The objects of his
tenderest affection were gay, happy, together, and, best of all, thinking
of him. That he was not with them gave him no regrets; his love was too
great for that. That their youth was soon to give place to the soberer
experiences of life, gave him no pang of fear for them. Reading their
letters, the Colonel was filled with quiet contentment; their future he
could trust to the care of that Guiding Hand to whom he had entrusted his
boy in childhood's earliest days.

ARTHUR PENDENNIS

[Illustration: ARTHUR PENDENNIS AT FAIR-OAKS.]

Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent there lived in a small
town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was
Pendennis. At an earlier date Mr. Pendennis had exercised the profession
of apothecary and surgeon, and had even condescended to sell a plaster
across the counter of his humble shop, or to vend tooth-brushes,
hair-powder, and London perfumery. And yet that little apothecary was a
gentleman with good education, and of as old a family as any in the
county of Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the
Pendennises back to the time of the Druids. He had had a piece of
University education, and might have pursued that career with honour, but
in his second year at Oxford his father died insolvent, and he was
obliged to betake himself to the trade which he always detested. For some
time he had a hard struggle with poverty, but his manners were so
gentleman-like and soothing that he was called in to prescribe for some
of the ladies in the best families of Bath. Then his humble little shop
became a smart one; then he shut it up altogether; then he had a gig with
a man to drive in; and before she died his poor old mother had the
happiness of seeing her beloved son step into a close carriage of his
own; with the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on
the panels. He married Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative
of the noble family of Bareacres, having met that young lady under Lady
Pentypool's roof.

The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman.
By prudence and economy, his income was largely increas