selected from a booth in
a fair?--well, not a fair,--a barn. That profession at once is closed to
you. The public service is closed to you. Society is closed to you. You
see, my good friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at the
bar to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of merit
occasionally marry out of their kitchens; but in no other profession.
Or you may come and live down here--down here, mon Dieu! for ever"
(said the Major, with a dreary shrug, as he thought with inexpressible
fondness of Pall Mall), "where your mother will receive the Mrs. Arthur
that is to be, with perfect kindness; where the good people of the
county won't visit you; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall be shy of
visiting you myself, for I'm a plain-spoken man, and I own to you that
I like to live with gentlemen for my companions; where you will have to
live, with rum-and-water--drinking gentlemen--farmers, and drag through
your life the young husband of an old woman, who, if she doesn't quarrel
with your mother, will at least cost that lady her position in society,
and drag her down into that dubious caste into which you must inevitably
fall. It is no affair of mine, my good sir. I am not angry. Your
downfall will not hurt me farther than that it will extinguish the hopes
I had of seeing my family once more taking its place in the world. It is
only your mother and yourself that will be ruined. And I pity you both
from my soul. Pass the claret: it is some I sent to your poor father; I
remember I bought it at poor Lord Levant's sale. But of course," added
the Major, smacking the wine, "having engaged yourself, you will do
what becomes you as a man of honour, however fatal your promise may be.
However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I set out by entreating
you to grant,--that there shall be nothing clandestine, that you will
pursue your studies, that you will only visit your interesting friend at
proper intervals. Do you write to her much?"

Pen blushed and said, "Why, yes, he had written."

"I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I
recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in
the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to
my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in
the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every
line of them still; for he'd used 'em so often, the old rogue, and had