uch more virtuous to have
had no prints at all. He still stood for the baubles which he sold
in order to pay Frodsham's bill, and his mother had cruelly to pinch
herself in order to discharge the jeweller's account, so that she was
in the end the sufferer by the lad's impertinent fancies and follies. We
are not presenting Pen to you as a hero or a model, only as a lad, who,
in the midst of a thousand vanities and weaknesses, has as yet some
generous impulses, and is not altogether dishonest.

We have said it was to the scandal of Mr. Buck the tutor that Pen's
extravagances became known: from the manner in which he entered college,
the associates he kept, and the introductions of Doctor Portman and the
Major, Buck for a long time thought that his pupil was a man of large
property, and wondered rather that he only wore a plain gown. Once on
going up to London to the levee with an address from his Majesty's Loyal
University of Oxbridge, Buck had seen Major Pendennis at St. James's in
conversation with two knights of the garter, in the carriage of one of
whom the dazzled tutor saw the Major whisked away after the levee. He
asked Pen to wine the instant he came back, let him off from chapels
and lectures more than ever, and felt perfectly sure that he was a young
gentleman of large estate.

Thus, he was thunderstruck when he heard the truth, and received a
dismal confession from Pen. His university debts were large, and the
tutor had nothing to do, and of course Pen did not acquaint him, with
his London debts. What man ever does tell all when pressed by his
friends about his liabilities? The tutor learned enough to know that Pen
was poor, that he had spent a handsome, almost a magnificent allowance,
and had raised around him such a fine crop of debts, as it would be very
hard work for any man to mow down; for there is no plant that grows so
rapidly when once it has taken root.

Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that Pen was terrified
lest his mother should know of his sins. "I can't bear to break it to
her," he said to the tutor in an agony of grief. "O! sir, I've been a
villain to her"--and he repented, and he wished he had the time to come
over again, and he asked himself, "Why, why did his uncle insist upon
the necessity of living with great people, and in how much did all his
grand acquaintance profit him?"

They were not shy, but Pen thought they were, and slunk from them
during his last terms at col