tion, wherever he goes."

"Bless the man! if a boy means to go to the bad, he'll go just as
easily in Whitbury as in Paris. Give the lad his head, and never fear;
he'll fall on his legs like a cat, I'll warrant him, whatever happens.
He's as steady as old Time, I tell you; there's a grey head on green
shoulders there."

"Steady?" said the Doctor, with a smile and a shrug.

"Steady, I tell you at heart; as prudent as you or I; and never lost
you a farthing, that you know. Hang good boys! give me one who knows
how to be naughty in the right place; I wouldn't give sixpence for a
good boy; I never was one myself, and have no faith in them. Give me
the lad who has more steam up than he knows what to do with, and must
needs blow off a little in larks. When once he settles down on the
rail, it'll send him along as steady as a luggage train. Did you never
hear a locomotive puffing and roaring before it gets under way? well,
that's what your boy is doing. Look at him now, with my poor little
Molly."

Tom was cantering about the garden with a little weakly child of eight
in his arms. The little thing was looking up in his face with delight,
screaming at his jokes.

"You are right, Mark: the boy's heart cannot be in the wrong place
while he is so fond of little children."

"Poor Molly! How she'll miss him! Do you think she'll ever walk,
Doctor?"

"I do indeed."

"Hum! ah! well! if she grows up, Doctor, and don't go to join her poor
dear mother up there, I don't know that I'd wish her a better husband
than your boy."

"It would be a poor enough match for her."

"Tut! she'll have the money, and he the brains. Mark my words, Doctor,
that boy'll be a credit to you; he'll make a noise in the world, or I
know nothing. And if his fancy holds seven years hence, and he wants
still to turn traveller, let him. If he's minded to go round the
world, I'll back him to go, somehow or other, or I'll eat my head, Ned
Thurnall!"

The Doctor acquiesced in this hopeful theory, partly to save an
argument; for Mark's reverence for his opinion was confined to
scientific matters; and he made up to his own self-respect by
patronising the Doctor, and, indeed, taking him sometimes pretty
sharply to task on practical matters.

"Best fellow alive is Thurnall; but not a man of business, poor
fellow. None of your geniuses are. Don't know what he'd do without
me."

So Tom carried Mary about all the morning, and went to Minchampstead
in the aft