s room, she saw, oh, such a
beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of lovely
rings and jewellery. And he had a new French watch and gold chain, in
place of the big old chronometer, with its bunch of jingling seals,
which had hung from the fob of John Pendennis, and by the second-hand of
which the defunct doctor had felt many a patient's pulse in his time.
It was but a few months back Pen had longed for this watch, which he
thought the most splendid and august timepiece in the world; and just
before he went to college, Helen had taken it out of her trinket-box
(where it had remained unwound since the death of her husband) and given
it to Pen with a solemn and appropriate little speech respecting his
father's virtues and the proper use of time. This portly and valuable
chronometer Pen now pronounced to be out of date, and, indeed, made
some comparisons between it and a warming-pan, which Laura thought
disrespectful, and he left the watch in a drawer, in the company of
soiled primrose gloves, cravats which had gone out of favour, and of
that other school watch which has once before been mentioned in this
history. Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen pronounced to be no long up to his
weight, and swapped her away for another and more powerful horse, for
which he had to pay rather a heavy figure. Mr. Pendennis gave the boy
the money for the new horse; and Laura cried when Rebecca was fetched
away.

Also Pen brought a large box of cigars branded Colorados, Afrancesados,
Telescopios, Fudson Oxford Street, or by some such strange titles, and
began to consume these not only about the stables and green-houses,
where they were very good for Helen's plants, but in his own study, of
which practice his mother did not at first approve. But he was at work
upon a prize-poem, he said, and could not compose without his cigar, and
quoted the late lamented it Lord Byron's lines in favour of the custom
of smoking. As he was smoking to such good purpose, his mother could not
of course refuse permission: in fact, the good soul coming into the room
one day in the midst of Pen's labours (he was consulting a novel which
had recently appeared, for the cultivation of the light literature
of his own country as well as of foreign nations became every
student)--Helen, we say, coming into the room and finding Pen on the
sofa at this work, rather than disturb him went for a light-box and his
cigar-case to his bedroom which was adjacent,