unty Chronicle? He writes something like you,
dear Pen, but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fotheringay?"

Pen said yes, he had; that night he went to see the "Stranger," she
acted Mrs. Haller. By the way, she was going to have a benefit, and
was to appear in Ophelia--suppose we were to go--Shakspeare, you know,
mother--we can get horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang
up with delight, she longed for a play.

Pen introduced "Shakspeare, you know," because the deceased Pendennis,
as became a man of his character, professed an uncommon respect for the
bard of Avon, in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than
in all 'Johnson's Poets' put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not
much read the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them, and
often said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of a proper
age, in taking him and mother to see some good plays of the immortal
poet.

The ready tears welled up in the kind mother's eyes as she remembered
these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly, and
said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Pen happy?--was he ashamed?
As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his
counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the
thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet's.

Helen, in her good humour, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That
ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an
objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play.
But, Shakspeare!--but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and
sit a whole night by her side!--he could not resist the idea of so much
pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and
gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis's most kind offer. As he
spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She
had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became more
positively odious every day in the widow's eyes.

We are not going to say a great deal about Pen's courtship of
Miss Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her
conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with
her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her.
Everything he knew, or hoped, or felt, or had read, or fancied, he told
to her. He never tired of talking and longing. One after another, as his