folk. 'Gad!
if I were some years younger, I would join them myself; I should act Sir
Pertinax Macsycophant famously; I have a touch of the mime in me. Well!
but what do you propose to do?--live with me?--eh!"

"Why, I think that might be the best, and certainly it would be the
pleasantest mode of passing my life. But----"

"But what?"

"Why, I can scarcely quarter myself on your courtesy; I should soon
grow discontented. So I shall write to my father, whom I, kindly and
considerately, by the way, informed of my safety the very first day of
my arrival at B----. I told him to direct his letters to your house;
but I regret to find that the handbill which so frightened me from my
propriety is the only notice he has deigned to take of my whereabout.
I shall write to him therefore again, begging him to let me enter the
army. It is not a profession I much fancy; but what then! I shall be my
own master."

"Very well said!" answered Saville; "and here I hope I can serve you. If
your father will pay the lawful sum for a commission in the Guards, why,
I think I have interest to get you in for that sum alone--no trifling
favour."

Godolphin was enchanted at this proposal, and instantly wrote to his
father, urging it strongly upon him; Saville, in a separate epistle,
seconded the motion. "You see," wrote the latter, "you see, my dear sir,
that your son is a wild, resolute scapegrace. You can do nothing
with him by schools and coercion: put him to discipline in the king's
service, and condemn him to live on his pay. It is a cheap mode, after
all, of providing for a reprobate; and as he will have the good fortune
to enter the army at so early an age, by the time he is thirty, he may
be a colonel on full pay. Seriously, this is the best thing you can do
with him,--unless you have a living in your family."

The old gentleman was much discomposed by these letters, and by his
son's previous elopement. He could not, however, but foresee, that if he
resisted the boy's wishes, he was likely to have a troublesome time of
it. Scrape after scrape, difficulty following difficulty, might ensue,
all costing both anxiety and money. The present offer furnished him with
a fair excuse for ridding himself, for a long time to come, of further
provision for his offspring; and now growing daily more and more
attached to the indolent routine of solitary economies in which he
moved, he was glad of an opportunity to deliver himself from future
interr