, his daily tutor, who
was commissioned to spare not the rod, neither to spoil the child), all
these causes induced Sarah to remain with her young master until such
time as he was sent to school.

Meanwhile an event of prodigious importance, a wonderment, a blessing
and a delight, had happened at the Hermitage. About two years after Mrs.
Newcome's marriage, the lady being then forty-three years of age, no
less than two little cherubs appeared in the Clapham Paradise--the
twins, Hobson Newcome and Brian Newcome, called after their uncle and
late grandfather, whose name and rank they were destined to perpetuate.
And now there was no reason why young Newcome should not go to school.
Old Mr. Hobson and his brother had been educated at that school of
Grey Friars, of which mention has been made in former works and to Grey
Friars Thomas Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging--O ye Gods! with
what delight!--the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of
the place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he
rose in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his
own: tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefore: bartering a
black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with
a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day; playing at cricket,
hockey, prisoners' base, and football, according to the season; and
gorging himself and friends with tarts when he had money (and of this
he had plenty) to spend. I have seen his name carved upon the Gown Boys'
arch: but he was at school long before my time; his son showed me the
name when we were boys together, in some year when George the Fourth was
king.

The pleasures of this school-life were such to Tommy Newcome, that he
did not care to go home for a holiday: and indeed, by insubordination
and boisterousness; by playing tricks and breaking windows; by marauding
upon the gardener's peaches and the housekeeper's jam; by upsetting his
two little brothers in a go-cart (of which wanton and careless injury
the present Baronet's nose bears marks to this very day); by going to
sleep during the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with levity,
he drew down on himself the merited wrath of his stepmother; and many
punishments in this present life, besides those of a future and much
more durable kind, which the good lady did not fail to point out that
he must undoubtedly inherit. His father, at Mrs. Newcome's instigation,
certainl