cket.

What would you have done? You see I had had my money, and spent it in
that pencil-case affair. The five-and-twenty shillings were a trust--by
me to be handed over.

But then would my parents wish their only child to be actually without
breakfast? Having this money, and being so hungry, so VERY hungry,
mightn't I take ever so little? Mightn't I at home eat as much as I
chose?

Well, I went into the coffee-shop, and spent fourpence. I remember
the taste of the coffee and toast to this day--a peculiar, muddy,
not-sweet-enough, most fragrant coffee--a rich, rancid, yet
not-buttered-enough delicious toast. The waiter had nothing. At any
rate, fourpence I know was the sum I spent. And the hunger appeased, I
got on the coach a guilty being.

At the last stage,--what is its name? I have forgotten in
seven-and-thirty years,--there is an inn with a little green and
trees before it; and by the trees there is an open carriage. It is our
carriage. Yes, there are Prince and Blucher, the horses; and my parents
in the carriage. Oh! how I had been counting the days until this one
came! Oh! how happy had I been to see them yesterday! But there was that
fourpence. All the journey down the toast had choked me, and the coffee
poisoned me.

I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, that I forgot the
maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal voice. I pull out the
twenty-four shillings and eightpence with a trembling hand.

"Here's your money," I gasp out, "which Mr. P---- owes you, all but
fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence to Hawker out of my money for a
pencil-case, and I had none left, and I took fourpence of yours, and had
some coffee at a shop."

I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering this confession.

"My dear boy," says the governor, "why didn't you go and breakfast at
the hotel?"

"He must be starved," says my mother.

I had confessed; I had been a prodigal; I had been taken back to my
parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime as yet, or a very
long career of prodigality; but don't we know that a boy who takes a pin
which is not his own, will take a thousand pounds when occasion serves,
bring his parents' gray heads with sorrow to the grave, and carry his
own to the gallows? Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our
friend Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by playing
pitch-and-toss on a tombstone: playing fair, for what we know: and
even for that sin he was