lunge of
Pen's, the Doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for
the Major."

"Send for the Major? with all my heart," said Arthur Prince of Pendennis
and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the hand. And the
colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters which were laid
on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at the commencement of
Prince Arthur's most veracious history.

CHAPTER VII. In which the Major makes his Appearance

Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at
Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout
fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded
him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a
widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all
the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of
Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in
her reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the
twanging of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling of his huge
neighbour wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's
feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to
the horrors and realities of life--a life which has passed away now and
become impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight miles an hour,
for twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail-coach, a hard seat, a
gouty tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen grumbling because
you did not fee them enough, a fellow-passenger partial to
spirits-and-water,--who has not borne with these evils in the jolly old
times? and how could people travel under such difficulties? And yet they
did, and were merry too. Next the widow, and by the side of the Major's
servant on the roof, were a couple of school-boys going home for the
midsummer holidays, and Major Pendennis wondered to see them sup at the
inn at Bagshot, where they took in a cargo of ham, eggs, pie, pickles,
tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor Major, sipping a
cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord
Steyne's dinner was coming off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardour
of the boys, however, amused the Major, who was very good-natured, and
he became the more interested when he found that the one who travelled
inside with him was a lord's son, whose noble father Pendennis, of
course, ha