the Colonel entered. "It is
you, you gadabout, is it?" cried Binnie. "See what it is to have a real
friend now, Colonel! I waited for you, because I knew you would want to
talk about that scapegrace of yours."

"Isn't he a fine fellow, James?" says the Colonel, lighting a cheroot as
he sits on the table. Was it joy, or the bedroom candle with which he
lighted his cigar, which illuminated his honest features so, and made
them so to shine?

"I have been occupied, sir, in taking the lad's moral measurement: and I
have pumped him as successfully as ever I cross-examined a rogue in my
court. I place his qualities thus:--Love of approbation, sixteen.
Benevolence, fourteen. Combativeness, fourteen. Adhesiveness, two.
Amativeness is not yet of course fully developed, but I expect will be
prodigiously strong. The imaginative and reflective organs are very
large; those of calculation weak. He may make a poet or a painter, or you
may make a sojor of him, though worse men than him's good enough for
that--but a bad merchant, a lazy lawyer, and a miserable mathematician.
My opinion, Colonel, is that young scapegrace will give you a deal of
trouble; or would, only you are so absurdly proud of him, and you think
everything he does is perfection. He'll spend your money for you; he'll
do as little work as need be. He'll get into scrapes with the sax. He's
almost as simple as his father, and that is to say that any rogue will
cheat him; and he seems to me to have your obstinate habit of telling the
truth, Colonel, which may prevent his getting on in the world; but on the
other hand will keep him from going very wrong. So that, though there is
every fear for him, there's some hope and some consolation."

"What do you think of his Latin and Greek?" asked the Colonel. Before
going out to his party Newcome had laid a deep scheme with Binnie, and it
had been agreed that the latter should examine the young fellow in his
humanities.

"Wall," cries the Scot, "I find that the lad knows as much about Greek
and Latin as I knew myself when I was eighteen years of age."

"My dear Binnie, is it possible? You, the best scholar in all India!"

"And which amounted to exactly nothing. By the admirable seestem purshood
at your public schools, just about as much knowledge as he could get by
three months' application at home. Mind ye, I don't say he would apply;
it is most probable he would do no such thing. But, at the cost of--how
much? two hundred p