possibly have made; but nevertheless Master Peregrine made this martial response.

Upon which Mrs. Pultuney made certain observations about her son's spirits infallibly proving the death of her, and a few other maternal vaticinations of this amiable nature, indicative of weak nerves and strong parental emotions.

"The army!-Ah! true," responded Mr. Pultuney; "a fine profession indeed, very fine in time of war-Peninsular campaigning harder work than playing at cricket, but in peace, Peregrine, a red coat, a loud voice, and a cigar, make a sort of bandbox soldier, which is all that is requisite now-a-days. This is the army in England, the king's army I mean; but what say you to the army in India, the company's service, Peregrine?"

"The very thing," said that young gentleman.

The alacrity with which this response was given, fairly upset Mrs. Pultuney. She had not at all calculated on any thing more than a reluctant consent, and this eagerness of concession, was too much for her; she burst into tears.

"Ah! I see how it is," she sobbed; "you are tired of home already, change, any thing for a change, you care nothing about leaving your mother."

Indeed, mamma, I do care very much," returned Master Peregrine Pultuney, rising up from the butterfly footstool, and taking his mother's hand; "now don't, mamma, pray don't. I do care

very much, indeed, but boys can't always be boys, and men must go into the world.”

"Go away, go away," resumed the lady, “you don't think any thing about me; you wouldn't care if you never saw me again."

The boy remonstrated, kissed his mother, told her not to cry about fifty times, and wound up by saying, that if he went to India, he would promise to come back again, a delusion under which most people have laboured, and most people have been disappointed.

However, it had, or appeared to have, some effect upon Mrs. Pultuney, for she began to wipe away her tears, and to say something about Peregrine's happiness being her first thought, and that supposing he could be happy in India, she would endeavour to be so in England, and with other self-denying and philosophic reflections, she brought herself into a state of composure.

There was then a little desultory conversation regarding the how and the when of this appointment to India. Peregrine said particularly "not next half," for next half the boys at his school were to play a grand match with the town club, and Peregrine was "one of the eleven."

Mrs. Pultuney said he was not old enough to go to India, a statement which was certainly true as far as regarded the Indian army, unless Peregrine aspired to a little preliminary training in the situation of a drummer-boy, and Mr. Pultuney agreed with

his wife. It was therefore settled that Peregrine should remain at school a year longer, and that at the expiration of this time, an appointment to the military college should be procured for him, if possible. This was tolerably satisfactory to all parties, for it is a great thing to defer an evil when you cannot altogether escape it.

It is not often that things turn out precisely as the parties most concerned have intended, and when they do it is remarkably fortunate, and so the Pultuneys ought to have thought; for Master Peregrine at the end of the holidays, or rather a fortnight after the holidays had ended, went back to school, played in the cricket-match against the town, made twenty-eight runs, caught out the best player on the opposite side, dined at the expense of the town gentlemen, for school-boys always beat "the town," and finished by getting drunk, very much to his own satisfaction.

The elder Mr. Pultuney too, was equally successful in all his undertakings. He went up to London, called on his friend the director, stated his wish, which was instantly complied with, and dined with the "tea-dealer" in the evening. A cadetship was promised, with a nomination to Addiscombe at the commencement of the ensuing term, and Mr. Pultuney was exhorted to prepare his son in vulgar and decimal fractions, and Cæsar; such being the full extent of the ordeal, these embryo soldiers have to pass-yet, incredible as it may appear, a vast num

ber of aspiring heroes are "remanded for future examination," as the police reports say, every year.

Our hero in the course of this intervening year, made wonderful progress in his classics, his cricketing, and his knowledge of the world. Nature had lavished her gifts very prodigally on the young gentleman, so that when he was fifteen years old, he was the best looking, the cleverest, the idlest, the wildest, the most amusing boy in Dr. Radix's academy, and moreover, in school phraseology, he was an "out-and-out dab at every thing," and it was a question whether he could make most runs or most verses in any given space of time. The maidservants declared he was the "flower of the school," and gave him bouquets accordingly on Sundays. The doctor's wife always begged him off, or tried to do so, when he got into a scrape, which truth compels us to say, was pretty often; the doctor's daughter, an interesting girl of fifteen, had more than once been kissed by him, pretty liberally, behind the dancing-room door, without telling her mamma: and the foot-boy declared that Master Pultuney's Wellingtons were the only ones in the school he derived pleasure from blacking—they "looked so tidy when they was done."

If any one be anxious to know what Peregrine Pultuney's school-fellows and school-master thought of that spirited young gentleman, we must refer him to the interesting narrative contained in the next chapter.

CHAPTER II.

In which the reader is informed of what Peregrine Pultuney's School-fellows and Peregrine Pultuney's School-master thought of Peregrine Pultuney.

Ir was in the latter end of the winter half-year, about the time at which schoolboys scribble, upon the walls and inside their books, "only one week to the holidays," when Master Peregrine Pultuney was sitting, after dinner, before the school-room fire-(dulce-domum having been sung twice over)-indulging, as was not very much his wont, in a train of melancholy reflections, occasioned, singular enough to relate, by the thoughts of his approaching departure from a place, whence the greater number of school-boys are especially glad to escape, and where very many grown up men heartily wish themselves back again.

But in spite of his volatility, the young gentleman whose exploits we are celebrating, was not destitute of a philosophic spirit. He knew that he had been very happy at school, and he was not quite sure that he was going to make a change for the