l?" I ask, smiling at the artless youth's confessions.

"Ethel is my cousin," replied little Newcome; "Aunt Ann's daughter.
There's Ethel and Alice, and Aunt Ann wanted the baby to be called
Boadicea, only uncle wouldn't; and there's Barnes and Egbert and little
Alfred, only he don't count; he's quite a baby, you know. Egbert and me
was at school at Timpany's; he's going to Eton next half. He's older than
me, but I can lick him."

"And how old is Egbert?" asks the smiling senior.

"Egbert's ten, and I'm nine, and Ethel's seven," replied the little
chubby-faced hero, digging his hands deep into his trousers, 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, and lost sight of him
for several years. Nor did we meet again until I was myself a young man
occupying chambers in the Temple.

Meanwhile the years of Clive's absence had slowly worn away for Colonel
Newcome, and at last the happy time came which he had been longing more
passionately than any prisoner for liberty, or schoolboy for holiday. The
Colonel had taken leave of his regiment. He had travelled to Calcutta;
and the Commander-in-Chief announced that in giving to Lieutenant-Colonel
Thomas Newcome, of the Bengal Cavalry, leave for the first time, after no
less than thirty-four years' abs