is Egbert?" asks the smiling senior.

"Egbert's ten, and I'm nine, and Ethel's seven," replies the little
chubby-faced hero, digging his hands deep into his trousers' pockets,
and jingling all the sovereigns there. I advised him to let me be his
banker; and, keeping one out of his many gold pieces, he handed over the
others, on which he drew with great liberality till his whole stock was
expended. The school hours of the upper and under boys were different
at that time; the little fellows coming out of their hall half an hour
before the Fifth and Sixth Forms; and many a time I used to find my
little blue jacket in waiting, with his honest square face, and white
hair, and bright blue eyes, and I knew that he was come to draw on his
bank. Ere long one of the pretty blue eyes was shut up, and a fine black
one substituted in its place. He had been engaged, it appeared, in a
pugilistic encounter with a giant of his own Form, whom he had worsted
in the combat. "Didn't I pitch into him, that's all?" says he in the
elation of victory; and when I asked whence the quarrel arose, he
stoutly informed me that "Wolf minor, his opponent, had been bullying a
little boy, and that he (the gigantic Newcome) wouldn't stand it."

So, being called away from the school, I said farewell and God bless you
to the brave little man, who remained a while at the Grey Friars, where
his career and troubles had only just begun.

Nor did we meet again until I was myself a young man occupying chambers
in the Temple, when our rencontre took place in the manner already
described.

Poor Costigan's outrageous behaviour had caused my meeting with my
schoolfellow of early days to terminate so abruptly and unpleasantly,
that I scarce expected to see Clive again, or at any rate to renew my
acquaintance with the indignant East Indian warrior who had quitted
our company in such a huff. Breakfast, however, was scarcely over in my
chambers the next morning, when there came a knock at the outer door,
and my clerk introduced "Colonel Newcome and Mr. Newcome."

Perhaps the (joint) occupant of the chambers in Lamb Court, Temple, felt
a little pang of shame at hearing the name of the visitors; for, if the
truth must be told, I was engaged pretty much as I had been occupied on
the night previous, and was smoking a cigar over the Times newspaper.
How many young men in the Temple smoke a cigar after breakfast as they
read the Times? My friend and companion of those days