st have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her,
and promised to love her for ever, there was not springing up in his
breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now
and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round about him were his servants
and handmaids. "You'll never send me away," little Laura said, tripping
by him, and holding his hand. "You won't send me to school, will you,
Arthur?"

Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn't go to school.
As for going himself, that was quite out of the question. He had
determined that that part of his life should not be renewed. In the
midst of the general grief, and the corpse still lying above, he had
leisure to conclude that he would have it all holidays for the future,
that he wouldn't get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the
Doctor any more, and had made a hundred of such day-dreams and resolves
for the future. How one's thoughts will travel! and how quickly our
wishes beget them! When he with Laura in his hand went into the kitchen
on his way to the dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, and other his favourite
haunts, all the servants there assembled in great silence with their
friends, and the labouring men and their wives, and Sally Potter
who went with the post-bag to Clavering, and the baker's man from
Clavering--all there assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy
occasion--rose up on his entrance and bowed or curtseyed to him.
They never used to do so last holidays, he felt at once and with
indescribable pleasure. The cook cried out, "O Lord," and whispered,
"How Master Arthur do grow!" Thomas, the groom, in the act of drinking,
put down the jug alarmed before his master. Thomas's master felt the
honour keenly. He went through and looked at the pointers. As Flora put
her nose up to his waistcoat, and Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled
at his chain, Pen patronised the dogs, and said, "Poo Ponto, poo Flora,"
in his most condescending manner. And then he went and looked at Laura's
hens, and at the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the dairy; perhaps
he blushed to think that it was only last holidays he had in a manner
robbed the great apple-tree, and been scolded by the dairymaid for
taking cream.

They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, "formerly an eminent medical
practitioner at Bat