, my dear," says the Baroness, "boys will be boys, and I don't want
Harry to be the first milksop in his family!" The bread which Maria
ate at her aunt's expense choked her sometimes. O me, how hard and
indigestible some women know how to make it!

Mr. Wolfe was for ever coming over from Westerham to pay court to the
lady of his love; and, knowing that the Colonel was entirely engaged
in that pursuit, Mr. Warrington scarcely expected to see much of him,
however much he liked that officer's conversation and society. It was
different from the talk of the ribald people round about Harry. Mr.
Wolfe never spoke of cards, or horses' pedigrees; or bragged of his
performances in the hunting-field; or boasted of the favours of women;
or retailed any of the innumerable scandals of the time. It was not a
good time. That old world was more dissolute than ours. There was an old
king with mistresses openly in his train, to whom the great folks of
the land did honour. There was a nobility, many of whom were mad and
reckless in the pursuit of pleasure; there was a looseness of words
and acts which we must note, as faithful historians, without going into
particulars, and needlessly shocking honest readers. Our young gentleman
had lighted upon some of the wildest of these wild people, and had found
an old relative who lived in the very midst of the rout.

Harry then did not remark how Colonel Wolfe avoided him, or when they
casually met, at first, notice the Colonel's cold and altered demeanour.
He did not know the stories that were told of him. Who does know the
stories that are told of him? Who makes them? Who are the fathers of
those wondrous lies? Poor Harry did not know the reputation he was
getting; and that, whilst he was riding his horse and playing his game
and taking his frolic, he was passing amongst many respectable persons
for being the most abandoned and profligate and godless of young men.

Alas, and alas! to think that the lad whom we liked so, and who was so
gentle and quiet when with us, so simple and so easily pleased, should
be a hardened profligate, a spendthrift, a confirmed gamester, a
frequenter of abandoned women! These stories came to honest Colonel
Lambert at Oakhurst: first one bad story, then another, then crowds of
them, till the good man's kind heart was quite filled with grief and
care, so that his family saw that something annoyed him. At first he
would not speak on the matter at all, and put aside the w