g just?
They are always sacrificing themselves or somebody for somebody else's
sake.

There happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who
were in the widow's intimacy whom Pendennis could by any possibility
gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which
he was longing to give away. Some young fellows in this predicament
bestow their young affections upon Dolly, the dairymaid, or cast the
eyes of tenderness upon Molly, the blacksmith's daughter. Pen thought
a Pendennis much too grand a personage to stoop so low. He was too
high-minded for a vulgar intrigue, and, at the idea of an intrigue or a
seduction, had he ever entertained it, his heart would have revolted as
from the notion of any act of baseness or dishonour. Miss Minny Portman
was too old, too large, and too fond of reading 'Rollin's Ancient
History.' The Miss Boardbacks, Admiral Boardback's daughters (of St.
Vincent's, or Fourth of June House, as it was called), disgusted
Pen with the London airs which they brought into the country, from
Gloucester Place, where they passed the season, and looked down upon Pen
as a chit. Captain Glanders's (H.P., 50th Dragoon Guards) three
girls were in brown-holland pinafores as yet, with the ends of their
hair-plaits tied up in dirty pink ribbon. Not having acquired the art of
dancing, the youth avoided such chances as he might have had of meeting
with the fair sex at the Chatteris' Assemblies; in fine, he was not in
love, because there was nobody at hand to fall in love with. And the
young monkey used to ride out, day after day in quest, of Dulcinea; and
peep into the pony-chaises and gentlefolks' carriages, as they drove
along the broad turnpike roads, with a heart beating within him, and
a secret tremor and hope that she might be in that yellow postchaise
coming swinging up the hill, or one of those three girls in beaver
bonnets in the back seat of the double gig, which the fat old gentleman
in black was driving, at four miles an hour. The postchaise contained a
snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid, her contemporary. The three
girls in the beaver bonnets were no handsomer than the turnips that
skirted the roadside. Do as he might, and ride where he would, the fairy
princess that he was to rescue and win, had not yet appeared to honest
Pen.

Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He had a world
of his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secre