the boy, her
memory had ever clung round that early time when they were together. The
good soul told endless tales of her darling's childhood, his frolics and
beauty. To-day was uncertain to her, but the past was still bright
and clear. As they sat prattling together over the bright tea-table,
attended by the trim little maid, whose services the Colonel's bounty
secured for his old nurse, the kind old creature insisted on having
Clive by her side. Again and again she would think he was actually her
own boy, forgetting, in that sweet and pious hallucination, that the
bronzed face, and thinned hair, and melancholy eyes of the veteran
before her, were those of her nursling of old days. So for near half the
space of man's allotted life he had been absent from her, and day and
night wherever he was, in sickness or health, in sorrow or danger, her
innocent love and prayers had attended the absent darling. Not in vain,
not in vain, does he live whose course is so befriended. Let us be
thankful for our race, as we think of the love that blesses some of
us. Surely it has something of Heaven in it, and angels celestial may
rejoice in it, and admire it.

Having nothing whatever to do, our Colonel's movements are of course
exceedingly rapid, and he has the very shortest time to spend in any
single place. That evening, Saturday, and the next day, Sunday, when
he will faithfully accompany his dear old nurse to church. And what
a festival is that day for her, when she has her Colonel and that
beautiful brilliant boy of his by her side, and Mr. Hicks, the curate,
looking at him, and the venerable Dr. Bulders himself eyeing him from
the pulpit, and all the neighbours fluttering and whispering, to be
sure, who can be that fine military gentleman, and that splendid young
man sitting by old Mrs. Mason, and leading her so affectionately out
of church? That Saturday and Sunday the Colonel will pass with good old
Mason, but on Monday he must be off; on Tuesday he must be in London,
he has important business in London,--in fact, Tom Hamilton, of his
regiment, comes up for election at the Oriental on that day, and on
such an occasion could Thomas Newcome be absent? He drives away from the
King's Arms through a row of smirking chambermaids, smiling waiters,
and thankful ostlers, accompanied to the post-chaise, of which the
obsequious Taplow shuts the door; and the Boscawen Room pronounces him
that night to be a trump; and the whole of the busy