, were represented
with artless exaggeration. Untiring in his efforts to be agreeable,
the major wished that Pen, too, should take particular notice of this
child; incited Arthur to invite him to his chambers, to give him a
dinner at the club, to take him to Madame Tussaud's, the Tower, the
play, and so forth, and to tip him, as the phrase is, at the end of
the day's pleasures. Arthur, who was good-natured and fond of
children, went through all these ceremonies one day; had the boy to
breakfast at the Temple, where he made the most contemptuous remarks
regarding the furniture, the crockery, and the tattered state of
Warrington's dressing-gown; and smoked a short pipe, and recounted the
history of a fight between Tuffy and Long Biggings, at Rose's, greatly
to the edification of the two gentlemen his hosts.
As the major rightly predicted, Lady Clavering was very grateful for
Arthur's attention to the boy; more grateful than the lad himself, who
took attentions as a matter of course, and very likely had more
sovereigns in his pocket than poor Pen, who generously gave him one of
his own slender stock of those coins.
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