he lived with his friend for three years, paid for that
too--in good-humour, in kindness and joviality, in a thousand little
services by which he made himself agreeable. What gentleman could want a
better friend than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way
or out of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron,
whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel or to
carve a capon?

Although Laura and Pen commonly went to Clavering Park together, yet
sometimes Mr. Pen took walks there unattended by her, and about which he
did not tell her. He took to fishing the Brawl, which runs through the
Park, and passes not very far from the garden-wall. And by the oddest
coincidence, Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at her
flowers), and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis fishing.

I wonder what trout Pen caught while the young lady was looking on? or
whether Miss Blanche was the pretty little fish which played round his
fly, and which Mr. Pen was endeavouring to hook? It must be owned, he
became very fond of that healthful and invigorating pursuit of angling,
and was whipping the Brawl continually with his fly.

As for Miss Blanche she had a kind heart; and having, as she owned,
herself "suffered" a good deal in the course of her brief life and
experience--why, she could compassionate other susceptible beings
like Pen, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs.
Pendennis redoubled: if they were not at the Park, she was not easy
unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read
French and German with Laura; and Mr. Pen read French and German along
with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Goethe into
English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked 'Mes Larmes' for him,
and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own tender
Muse.

It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed
suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide. Death
she repeatedly longed for. A faded rose inspired her with such grief
that you would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder
how a young creature (who had had a snug home or been at a comfortable
boarding-school, and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of)
should have suffered so much--should have found the means of getting at
such an ocean of despair and passion (as a runaway boy who will get to
sea), and having