that it was Pendennis's uncle in an instant, and a
hundred young faces wondering and giggling, between terror and laughter,
turned now to the new-comer and then to the awful Doctor.

The Major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the Doctor,
which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the
card, "I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill."

As the Doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather
a seared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then,
burst out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the Doctor stamping
with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the Major
beckoned to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down
his books, Pen went across.

The Doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take
the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the Captain, and
all the boys understanding the signal gathered up their books and poured
out of the hall.

Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
"Is there anything the matter with my mother?" he said. He could hardly
speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready to start.

"No," said the Major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your
trunk directly; I have got a postchaise at the gate."

Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake
hands with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the
same man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and
magnificent Princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a grey petticoat,
so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
of the schoolmaster disappeared.

"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the Doctor. "It is a pity to
take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle
and unenergetic, but he is a very honest gentlemanlike little fellow,
though I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have
some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."

But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
should see him alive.

"There's no other son, is there?" said the Doctor. The Major answered
"No."

"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other