y jest went round. We chanted and I remember I
wanted to fight a postboy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?"

"No, sir. Fight didn't come off, sir," said Stoopid, still with perfect
gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker's dressing-case--a trunk, the gift
of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never travelled. It
contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of
razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker's beard should come.

"Do it some other day," said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up
his little lean arms over his head. "No, there was no fight; but there
was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the General chanted--Costigan
I mean.--Did you ever hear him sing 'The Little Pig under the Bed,'
Pen?"

"The man we met yesterday," said Pen, all in a tremor, "the father
of---"

"Of the Fotheringay,--the very man. Ain't she a Venus, Pen?"

"Please sir, Mr. Costigan's in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you
asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't wake
you on no account; and has been here since eleven o'clock, sir---"

"How much is it now?"

"One, sir."

"What would the best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she
saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She
wants me to cultivate my neglected genus--He, be! I say, Pen, this isn't
quite like seven o'clock school,--is it, old boy?"--and the young fellow
burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added--"Go in and
talk to the General whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him to
sing you 'The Little Pig under the Bed;' it's capital." Pen went off in
great perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his
toilet.

Of Mr. Foker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a
fortune was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the
most doting mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian
school from father to son; at which place, our friend, whose name could
be seen over the playground wall, on a public-house sign, under which
'Foker's Entire' was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account
of his trade, his uncomely countenance, his inaptitude for learning and
cleanliness, his gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how
a susceptible youth, under the tyranny of his schoolfellows, becomes
silent and a sneak, may understand how in a ver