've given up all that kind of thing," said Tom.

"Your people are not in London."

"It will make no difference when they do come up. I call an evening
in the bosom of one's family about the slowest thing there is. The
bosom must do without me for the future."

"Won't your governor cut up rough?"

"He must cut up as he pleases. But I rather fancy he knows all about
it. I shan't spend half as much money this way as if I had a house
and wife and family,--and what we may call a bosom of one's own."
Then they had dinner and went to the theatre, and played billiards,
and had supper, and spent the night in a manner very delightful, no
doubt, to themselves, but of which their elder friends could hardly
have approved.

There was a good deal of this following upon the episode of the
necklace, and it must be told with regret that our young hero fell
into certain exploits which were by no means creditable to him. More
than one good-humoured policeman had helped him home to his lodgings;
but alas, on Christmas Eve, he fell into the hands of some guardian
of the peace who was not quite sufficiently good-natured, and Tom
passed the night and the greater part of the following morning,
recumbent, he in one cell, and his friend Faddle in the next, with an
intimation that they would certainly be taken before a magistrate on
the day after Christmas Day.

Oh, Ayala! Ayala! It must be acknowledged that you were in a measure
responsible;--and not only for the lamentable condition of your
lover, but also of that of his friend. For, in his softer moments,
Tom had told every thing to Faddle, and Faddle had declared that
he would be true to the death to a friend suffering such unmerited
misfortune. Perhaps the fidelity of Faddle may have owed something
to the fact that Tom's pecuniary allowances were more generous than
those accorded to himself. To Ayala must be attributed the occurrence
of these misfortunes. But Tom in his more fiery moments,--those
moments which would come between the subsidence of actual sobriety
and the commencement of intoxication,--attributed all his misfortunes
to the Colonel. "Faddle," he would say in these moments, "of course
I know that I'm a ruined man. Of course I'm aware that all this is
only a prelude to some ignominious end. I have not sunk to this
kind of thing without feeling it." "You'll be right enough some day,
old fellow," Faddle would reply. "I shall live to be godfather to
the first boy." "Never, Fa