andsome snob! And so about Aunt
Maria, she's very handsome and she's very finely dressed, only somehow
she's not--she's not the ticket, you see."

"Oh, she's not the ticket," says the Colonel, much amused.

"Well, what I mean is--but never mind," says the boy. "I can't tell you
what I mean. I don't like to make fun of her, you know, for after all,
she is very kind to me; but Aunt Anne is different, and it seems as if
what she says is more natural; and though she has funny ways of her own
too, yet somehow she looks grander,"--and here the lad laughed again.
"And do you know, I often think that as good a lady as Aunt Anne
herself, is old Aunt Honeyman at Brighton--that is, in all essentials,
you know. For she is not proud, and she is not vain, and she never says
an unkind word behind anybody's back, and she does a deal of kindness to
the poor without appearing to crow over them, you know; and she is not
a bit ashamed of letting lodgings, or being poor herself, as sometimes I
think some of our family----"

"I thought we were going to speak no ill of them?" says the Colonel,
smiling.

"Well, it only slipped out unawares," says Clive, laughing; "but at
Newcome when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great ass, Barnes
Newcome, gives himself his airs, it makes me die of laughing. That time
I went down to Newcome, I went to see old Aunt Sarah, and she told me
everything, and showed me the room where my grandfather--you know; and
do you know I was a little hurt at first, for I thought we were swells
till then. And when I came back to school, where perhaps I had been
giving myself airs, and bragging about Newcome, why, you know, I thought
it was right to tell the fellows."

"That's a man," said the Colonel, with delight; though had he said,
"That's a boy," he had spoken more correctly. Indeed, how many men do we
know in the world without caring to know who their fathers were? and how
many more who wisely do not care to tell us? "That's a man," cries the
Colonel; "never be ashamed of your father, Clive."

"Ashamed of my father!" says Clive, looking up to him, and walking on as
proud as a peacock. "I say," the lad resumed, after a pause--

"Say what you say," said the father.

"Is that all true what's in the Peerage--in the Baronetage, about Uncle
Newcome and Newcome; about the Newcome who was burned at Smithfield;
about the one that was at the battle of Bosworth; and the old old
Newcome who was bar--that is, who was