me tell
you that. Look out; I shall be on the watch for you: and I shall die
content, my boy, if I can see you with a good ladylike wife, and a good
carriage, and a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing your
friends, like a gentleman. Would you like to vegetate like your dear
good mother at Fairoaks? Dammy, sir! life, without money and the best
society isn't worth having." It was thus this affectionate uncle spoke,
and expounded to Pen his simple philosophy.

"What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?" thought the lad.
Indeed old Pendennis's morals were not their morals, nor was his wisdom
theirs.

This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely
concluded, when Warrington came out of his bedroom, no longer in rags,
but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall and perfectly frank and
good-humoured. He did the honours of his ragged sitting-room with as
much ease as if it had been the finest apartment in London. And queer
rooms they were in which the Major found his nephew. The carpet was full
of holes--the table stained with many circles of Warrington's previous
ale-pots. There was a small library of law-books, books of poetry,
and of mathematics, of which he was very fond. (He had been one of the
hardest livers and hardest readers of his time at Oxbridge, where the
name of Stunning Warrington was yet famous for beating bargemen, pulling
matches, winning prizes, and drinking milk-punch.) A print of the old
college hung up over the mantelpiece, and some battered volumes of
Plato, bearing its well-known arms, were on the book-shelves. There were
two easy-chairs; a standing reading-desk piled with bills; a couple of
very meagre briefs on a broken-legged study-table. Indeed, there was
scarcely any article of furniture that had not been in the wars, and was
not wounded. "Look here, sir, here is Pen's room. He is a dandy, and
has got curtains to his bed, and wears shiny boots, and a silver
dressing-case." Indeed, Pen's room was rather coquettishly arranged, and
a couple of neat prints of opera-dancers, besides a drawing of Fairoaks,
hung on the walls. In Warrington's room there was scarcely any article
of furniture, save a great shower-bath, and a heap of books by the
bedside: where he lay upon straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe,
and read half through the night his favourite poetry or mathematics.

When he had completed his simple toilette, Mr. Warrington came out of
thi