He had a worlds of his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secret pleasure-place in which it disports? Let no clumsy prying or dull meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children. Actæon was a brute for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally alone, my good madam, if you have a poet for a child. Even your admirable advice may be a bore sometimes. You are faultless; but it does not follow that everybody in your family is to think exactly like yourself. Yonder little child may have thoughts too deep even for your great mind, and fancies so coy and timid that they will not bare themselves when your ladyship sits by.

Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great number of her son's secrets. But she kept these things in her heart (if we may so speak), and did not speak of them. Besides, she had made up her mind that he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was six-and-twenty; and had finished his college career; and had made his grand tour; and was settled either in London, astonishing all the metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or, better still, in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.

 

While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteris for the purpose of carrying to the County Chronicle a tremendous and thrilling poem for the next week's paper; and putting up his horse, according to custom, at the stables of the George Hotel there, he fell in with an old acquaintance. A grand black tandem, with scarlet wheels, came rattling into the inn-yard, as Pen stood there in converse with the hostler about Rebecca; and the voice of the driver called out, »Hallo, Pendennis, is that you?« in a loud patronizing manner. Pen had some difficulty in recognizing, under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast greatcoats and neckcloths with which the new-comer was habited, the person and figure of his quondam schoolfellow, Mr. Foker.

A year's absence had made no small difference in that gentleman. A youth who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who spent his pocket-money on tarts and hardbake, now appeared before Pen in one of those costumes to which the public consent – that I take to be quite as influential in this respect as Johnson's, Dictionary – has awarded the title of »Swell.« He had a bulldog between his legs, and in his scarlet shawl neckcloth was a pin representing another bulldog in gold. He wore a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains; a green cut-away coat with basket buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented with cheese-plate buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring incident of the road or the chase, – all of which ornaments set off this young fellow's figure to such advantage, that you would hesitate to say which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a boxer en goguette, or a coachman in his gala suit.

»Left that place for good, Pendennis?« Mr. Foker said, descending from his landau, and giving Pendennis a finger.

»Yes, this year or more,« Pen said.

»Beastly old hole,« Mr. Foker remarked. »Hate it. Hate the Doctor; hate Towzer, the second master; hate everybody there. Not a fit place for a gentleman.«

»Not at all,« said Pen, with an air of the utmost consequence.

»By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the Doctor's walking into me,« Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had likewise fearful dreams of this nature). »When I think of the diet there, by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef, pudding on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look at my leader – did you ever see a prettier animal? Drove over from Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going, sir.«

»Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?« Pendennis asked.

»I'm coaching there,« said the other, with a nod.

»What?« asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder that Foker burst out laughing, and said, »He was blowed if he didn't think Pen was such a flat as not to know what coaching meant.«

»I'm come down with a coach from Oxbridge. A tutor, don't you see, old boy? He's coaching me, and some other men, for the Little-go. Me and Spavin have the drag between us. And I thought I'd just tool over, and go to the play. Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe?« and Mr. Foker began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn-yard, looking round for the sympathy of his groom and the stablemen.

Pen thought he would like to go to the play too, and could ride home afterwards, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted Foker's invitation to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr.