at something had happened at home.
"Is there anything the matter with--my mother?" he said. He could hardly
speak for emotion and the tears which were ready to start.

"No," said the Major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your trunk
directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate."

Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake hands
with the Major.

"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the Doctor. "It is a pity to
take the boy otherwise. He is a good boy, rather idle and unenergetic,
but an honest, gentleman-like little fellow, though I can't get him to
construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have some luncheon? My wife
will be very happy to see you."

But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
ill, and had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if
they should see him alive.

"There's no other son, is there?" said the Doctor. The Major
answered "No."

"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property, I believe?" asked the other
in an off-hand way.

"H'm--so-so," said the Major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end. And
Arthur Pendennis got into a post-chaise with his uncle, never to come
back to school any more.

As the chaise drove through Clavering, the ostler standing whistling
under the archway of the Clavering Arms winked to the postilion
ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and
opened the lodge-gates and let the travellers through with a silent shake
of the head. All the blinds were down at Fair-Oaks; and the face of the
old footman was as blank when he let them in. Arthur's face was white,
too, with terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and love the
deceased man might have had, and he adored his wife, and loved and
admired his son with all his heart, he had shut them up within himself;
nor had the boy ever been able to penetrate that frigid outward barrier.

A little girl, who was Mrs. Pendennis's adopted daughter, the child of
a dear old friend, peered for a moment under the blinds as the chaise
came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and there
taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
upstairs to his mother. What passed between that lady and the boy is
not of import; a veil should be thrown over those sacred emotions of
love and grief.

As for Arthur Pendennis, after