seldom out of his mouth at any hour of the
day.

He had a couple of bedrooms adjacent to this sitting-room, and when
Binnie, as brisk and rosy about the gills as chanticleer, broke out in
a morning salutation, "Hush," says the Colonel, putting a long finger up
to his mouth, and advancing towards him as noiselessly as a ghost.

"What's in the wind now?" asks the little Scot; "and what for have ye
not got your shoes on?"

"Clive's asleep," says the Colonel, with a countenance full of extreme
anxiety.

"The darling boy slumbers, does he?" said the wag; "mayn't I just step
in and look at his beautiful countenance whilst he's asleep, Colonel?"

"You may if you take off those confounded creaking shoes," the other
answered, quite gravely; and Binnie turned away to hide his jolly round
face, which was screwed up with laughter.

"Have ye been breathing a prayer over your rosy infant's slumbers, Tom?"
asks Mr. Binnie.

"And if I have, James Binnie," the Colonel said gravely, and his sallow
face blushing somewhat, "if I have, I hope I've done no harm. The last
time I saw him asleep was nine years ago, a sickly little pale-faced
boy in his little cot, and now, sir, that I see him again, strong and
handsome, and all that a fond father can wish to see a boy, I should be
an ungrateful villain, James, if I didn't--if I didn't do what you said
just now, and thank God Almighty for restoring him to me."

Binnie did not laugh any more. "By George, Tom Newcome," said he,
"you're just one of the saints of the earth. If all men were like you
there'd be an end of both our trades; there would be no fighting and
no soldiering, no rogues and no magistrates to catch them." The
Colonel wondered at his friend's enthusiasm, who was not used to be
complimentary; indeed what so usual with him as that simple act of
gratitude and devotion about which his comrade spoke to him? To ask a
blessing for his boy was as natural to him as to wake with the sunrise,
or to go to rest when the day was over. His first and his last thought
was always the child.

The two gentlemen were home in time enough to find Clive dressed, and
his uncle arrived for breakfast. The Colonel said a grace over that
meal: the life was begun which he had longed and prayed for, and the son
smiling before his eyes who had been in his thoughts for so many fond
years.

CHAPTER IX. Miss Honeyman's

In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most
freque