likely to die long before he did. Hugh could not deny this; but he
never liked to think about it:--he always drove away the thought; though
he knew, as his mother said, that this was rather cowardly, and that the
wisest and most loving people in the world remember the most constantly
and cheerfully that friends must be parted for a while, before they can
live together for ever.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOLT AND HIS HELP.

Nothing more was heard by Hugh, or any one else, of Lamb's debt. The
creditor himself chose to say nothing about it, so much was he annoyed
at being considered fond of money: but he was sure that Lamb's pockets
were filled, from time to time, as he was seen eating good things in
by-corners when everybody knew that his credit with his companions, and
with all the neighbouring tradespeople, was exhausted. It was surprising
that anybody could care so much for a shilling's worth of tarts or
fruit as to be at the trouble of any concealment, or of constantly
getting out of Hugh's way, rather than pay, and have done with it. When
Lamb was seen munching or skulking, Firth sometimes asked Hugh whether
he had got justice yet in that quarter: and then Hugh laughed; and Firth
saw that he had gained something quite as good,--a power of doing
without it good-humouredly, from those who were so unhappy as not to
understand or care for justice.

In one respect, however, Hugh was still within Lamb's power. When Lamb
was not skulking, he was much given to boasting; and his boasts were
chiefly about what a great man he was to be in India. He was really
destined for India; and his own opinion was that he should have a fine
life of it there, riding on an elephant, with a score of servants always
about him, spending all his mornings in shooting, and all his evenings
at dinners and balls. Hugh did not care about the servants, sport, or
dissipation; and he did not see why any one should cross the globe to
enjoy things like these, which might be had at home. But it did make him
sigh to think that a lazy and ignorant boy should be destined to live
among those mountains, and that tropical verdure of which he had
read,--to see the cave-temples, the tanks, the prodigious rivers, and
the natives and their ways, of which his imagination was full, while he
must stay at home, and see nothing beyond London, as long as he lived.
He did not grudge Holt his prospect of going to India; for Holt was an
improved and improving boy, and had,