ciency." And now the ship has sailed, the voyage is over, and
once more, after so many long years, the honest soldier's foot is on his
native shore.

CHAPTER VI. Newcome Brothers

Besides his own boy, whom he worshipped, this kind Colonel had a score,
at least, of adopted children, to whom he chose to stand in the light
of a father. He was for ever whirling away in postchaises to this school
and that, to see Jack Brown's boys, of the Cavalry; or Mrs. Smith's
girls, of the Civil Service; or poor Tom Hicks's orphan, who had nobody
to look after him now that the cholera had carried off Tom, and his wife
too. On board the ship in which he returned from Calcutta were a dozen
of little children, of both sexes, some of whom he actually escorted
to their friends before he visited his own; and though his heart was
longing for his boy at Grey Friars. The children at the schools seen,
and largely rewarded out of his bounty (his loose white trousers had
great pockets, always heavy with gold and silver, which he jingled when
he was not pulling his mustachios--to see the way in which he tipped
children made one almost long to be a boy again); and when he had
visited Miss Pinkerton's establishment, or Doctor Ramshorn's adjoining
academy at Chiswick, and seen little Tom Davis or little Fanny Holmes
the honest fellow would come home and write off straightway a long
letter to Tom's or Fanny's parents, far away in the Indian country,
whose hearts he made happy by his accounts of their children, as he had
delighted the children themselves by his affection and bounty. All
the apple- and orange-women (especially such as had babies as well as
lollipops at their stalls), all the street-sweepers on the road between
Nerot's and the Oriental, knew him, and were his pensioners. His
brothers in Threadneedle Street cast up their eyes at the cheques which
he drew.

One of the little people of whom the kind Newcome had taken charge
luckily dwelt near Portsmouth; and when the faithful Colonel consigned
Miss Fipps to her grandmother, Mrs. Admiral Fipps, at Southampton, Miss
Fipps clung to her guardian, and with tears and howls was torn away
from him. Not until her maiden aunts had consoled her with strawberries,
which she never before had tasted, was the little Indian comforted for
the departure of her dear Colonel. Master Cox, Tom Cox's boy, of the
Native Infantry, had to be carried asleep from the "George" to the
mail that night. Master Cox