him, and Lady Clara very kind, and he wrote
to me telling me of your kindness. Ahem! this is tolerable claret. I
wonder where Clive gets it?"

"You were speaking about that indigo, Colonel!" here Barnes interposes.
"Our house has done very little in that way, to be sure but I suppose
that our credit is about as good as Battie's and Jolly's, and if----"
but the Colonel is in a brown study.

"Clive will have a good bit of money when I die," resumes Clive's
father.

"Why, you are a hale man--upon my word, quite a young man, and may marry
again, Colonel," replies the nephew fascinatingly.

"I shall never do that," replies the other. "Ere many years are gone, I
shall be seventy years old, Barnes."

"Nothing in this country, my dear sir! positively nothing. Why, there
was Titus, my neighbour in the country--when will you come down to
Newcome?--who married a devilish pretty girl, of very good family,
too, Miss Burgeon, one of the Devonshire Burgeons. He looks, I am sure,
twenty years older than you do. Why should not you do likewise?"

"Because I like to remain single, and want to leave Clive a rich man.
Look here, Barnes, you know the value of our bank shares, now?"

"Indeed I do; rather speculative; but of course I know what some sold
for last week," says Barnes.

"Suppose I realise now. I think I am worth six lakhs. I had nearly two
from my poor father. I saved some before and since I invested in this
affair; and could sell out to-morrow with sixty thousand pounds."

"A very pretty sum of money, Colonel," says Barnes.

"I have a pension of a thousand a year."

"My dear Colonel, you are a capitalist! we know it very well," remarks
Sir Barnes.

"And two hundred a year is as much as I want for myself," continues
the capitalist, looking into the fire, and jingling his money in
his pockets. "A hundred a year for a horse; a hundred a year for
pocket-money, for I calculate, you know, that Clive will give me a
bedroom and my dinner."

"He! he! If your son won't, your nephew will, my dear Colonel!" says the
affable Barnes, smiling sweetly.

"I can give the boy a handsome allowance, you see," resumes Thomas
Newcome.

"You can make him a handsome allowance now, and leave him a good fortune
when you die!" says the nephew, in a noble and courageous manner,--and
as if he said Twelve times twelve are a hundred and forty-four and you
have Sir Barnes Newcome's authority--Sir Barnes Newcome's, mind you--to
say so.

"No