ble to choose his profession. He can go into the
army, or, if he prefers, the church, or the law--they are open to him;
and when he goes to the university, by which time I shall be, in all
probability, a major-general, I can come back to India for a few years,
and return by the time he has a wife and a home for his old father; or,
if I die, I shall have done the best for him, and my boy will be left
with the best education, a tolerable small fortune, and the blessing of
his old father."

Such were the plans of the kind schemer. How fondly he dwelt on them, how
affectionately he wrote of them to his boy! How he read books of travels
and looked over the maps of Europe! and said, "Rome, sir, glorious Rome;
it won't be very long, major, before my boy and I see the Colosseum, and
kiss the Pope's toe. We shall go up the Rhine to Switzerland, and over
the Simplon, the work of the great Napoleon. By jove, sir, think of the
Turks before Vienna, and Sobieski clearing eighty thousand of 'em off the
face of the earth! How my boy will rejoice in the picture galleries
there, and in Prince Eugene's prints! The boy's talent for drawing is
wonderful, sir, wonderful. He sent me a picture of our old school. The
very actual thing, sir; the cloisters, the school, the head gown boy
going in with the rods, and the doctor himself. It would make you die of
laughing!"

He regaled the ladies of the regiment with dive's letters, and those of
Miss Honeyman, which contained an account of the boy. He even bored some
of his hearers with this prattle; and sporting young men would give or
take odds that the Colonel would mention Clive's name, once before five
minutes, three times in ten minutes, twenty-five times in the course of
dinner, and so on. But they who laughed at the Colonel laughed very
kindly; and everybody who knew him, loved him; everybody that is, who
loved modesty, generosity and honour.

As to Clive himself, by this time he was thoroughly enjoying his new life
in England. After remaining for a time at Doctor Timpany's school, where
he was first placed by his aunt, Miss Honeyman, he was speedily removed
to that classical institution in which Colonel Newcome had been a student
in earlier days. My acquaintance with young Clive was at this school,
Grey Friars, where our acquaintance was brief and casual. He had the
advantage of being six years my junior, and such a difference of age
between lads at a public school puts intimacy out of the