row in the
bedrooms, where the lad and three others were discovered making a
supper off a pork-pie and two bottles of prime old port from the Red Cow
public-house in Grey Friars Lane. When the bell has done ringing, and
all these busy little bees have swarmed into their hive, there is a
solitude in the place. The Colonel and his son walked the playground
together, that gravelly flat, as destitute of herbage as the Arabian
desert, but, nevertheless, in the language of the place called the
green. They walk the green, and they pace the cloisters, and Clive shows
his father his own name of Thomas Newcome carved upon one of the arches
forty years ago. As they talk, the boy gives sidelong glances at his new
friend, and wonders at the Colonel's loose trousers, long mustachios,
and yellow face. He looks very odd, Clive thinks, very odd and very
kind, and he looks like a gentleman, every inch of him:--not like
Martin's father, who came to see his son lately in high-lows, and a
shocking bad hat, and actually flung coppers amongst the boys for a
scramble. He bursts out a-laughing at the exquisitely ludicrous idea of
a gentleman of his fashion scrambling for coppers.

And now, enjoining the boy to be ready against his return (and you may
be sure Mr. Clive was on the look-out long before his sire appeared),
the Colonel whirled away in his cab to the City to shake hands with his
brothers, whom he had not seen since they were demure little men in blue
jackets, under charge of a serious tutor.

He rushed through the clerks and the banking-house, he broke into the
parlour where the lords of the establishment were seated. He astonished
those trim quiet gentlemen by the warmth of his greeting, by the
vigour of his hand-shake, and the loud high tones of his voice, which
penetrated the glass walls of the parlour, and might actually be heard
by the busy clerks in the hall without. He knew Brian from Hobson at
once--that unlucky little accident in the go-cart having left its mark
for ever on the nose of Sir Brian Newcome, the elder of the twins. Sir
Brian had a bald head and light hair, a short whisker cut to his
cheek, a buff waistcoat, very neat boots and hands. He looked like
the "Portrait of a Gentleman" at the Exhibition, as the worthy is
represented: dignified in attitude, bland, smiling, and statesmanlike,
sitting at a table unsealing letters, with a despatch-box and a silver
inkstand before him, a column and a scarlet curtain behind,