r, 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. 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 I'll eat my head, Ned Thurnall!"

So Tom carried Mary about all the morning, and next day went to Paris,
and soon became the best pistol shot and billiard-player in the Quartier
Latin. Then he went to St. Mumpsimus's Hospital in London, and became
the best boxer therein, and captain of the eight-oar, besides winning
prizes and certificates without end, and becoming in time the most
popular house-surgeon in the hospital; but nothing could keep him
permanently at home. Settle down in a country practice he would not.
Cost his father a farthing he would not. So he started forth into the
wide world with nothing but his wits and his science, an anatomical
professor to a new college in some South American republic.
Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the annual revolution
had just taken place, and that the party who had founded the college had
all been shot. Whereat he whistled, and started off again, no man knew
whither.

"Having got round half the world, daddy," he wrote home, "it's hard if I
don't get round the other half."

With which he vanished into infinite space, and was only heard of by
occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains, the Spanish West
Indies, Otaheite, Singapore, the Falkland Islands, and all manner of
unexpected places, sending home valuable notes, zoological and
botanical.

At last when full four years were passed and gone since Tom started for
South America, he descended from the box of the day-mail at Whitbury,
with a serene and healthful countenance, shouldered his carpet-bag, and
started for his father's house.

He walked in, and hung up his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in
from a walk. Not finding the old man, he went into Mark Armsworth's,
frightening out of her wits a pale, ugly girl of seventeen, whom he
discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon recovered
her equanimity, and longed to throw her arms round his neck as of old,
and was only restrained by the thought that she was grown a gr