his late guardian (?), Mr. Hollis, is very irate against the lad, and likely to do him harm rather than good, for which reason, and for other reasons, it is better that the whole matter be kept secret."

The letter concluded with some pecuniary arrangements suitable to either of the cases proposed, and upon its arrival in due course at Mineton Robert Birt was put in possession of its contents. He at once elected, to Mr. Pluckit's astonishment. and Mrs. Syrup's indignation, to become a member of the parish school; and he was placed there almost immediately, and had his lodgings at the schoolmaster's.

CHAPTER VIII.

He

MASTER HENRY ADOLPHUS PLANTAGENET BROOKS HOLLIS was a very sharp boy indeed; the idol of his mother and the terror of his friends. was not, indeed, one of those monstrosities of early learning who declaim "My name is Norval" to patient suffering audiences, with murder in their hearts, or fix elderly gentlemen, half a century from school, with quotations out of the syntax; but he was unscrupulous as well as precocious: he would cut himself an excellent wig out of a door-mat, puff out his childish cheeks as if with plumpers, impart very tolerable delirium tremens to his hands, and enter the drawing-room, a capital parody upon the Honourable George Lord Rexham, his uncle and godfather. The irreverent little mimic would even flour his hair, array himself in a table-cloth, put on gold spectacles, white cravat and bands, and preach over the back of a chair, after the well-known manner of the Right Reverend the Bishop of Plumbun, to the delight of his father and a select

congregation of after-dinner friends; but perhaps the talents of Master Adolphus were most successfully exhibited, when he would come up the great staircase with a solemn noiseless step, arranging his countenance and his waistcoat, putting his hair well back from his forehead, coughing very delicately, and announcing his presence by the bland intonation of "Well, now, how are we this fine morning?" in contempt of poor old Sir Toby Ruffles, who most vehemently detested the boy in return. His infant spirit rose against being excluded from accompanying gay lady Beebonnet to the Opera, from drinking like papa did, from grown-up festivities, in fact, of all kinds. Many an evening, when his nurse looked high and low for the young truant, he would be lying hid beneath the dining-room table, surrounded by sixteen pairs of unconscious legs belonging to his parents' guests, twitching this and pinching that, and even cautiously inserting a pin's point when the temptation of the ample calf of a stout gentleman or Tady, encased in its silk stocking, was too overwhelming. At last, when the hushed surmise that there must be "some horrid dog under the table" got to be openly expressed, young Pickle would rush out between the two most nervous persons in the company, barking. Mr. Hollis's favourite terrier, Vic, almost met with his death in consequence of this

agreeable trait in his young master; for, being on one occasion in Adolphus's hiding-place, and smelling about Sir Charles Lester's aristocratic legs, the Baronet, at once concluding it was "that bore of a boy," against whom he had a grudge of this kind, of old standing, kicked out from the knee with imperturbable face, but so vigorously as to break a couple of Vic's ribs. The child was a mischievous spoiled lad indeed, bad in London, but worse in the country, where he had greater freedom. At Blayfield Park, too, the Hollis seat in Rookshire, his delinquencies, unhappily for him, came more under the notice of his father, because he had the more leisure to observe them. "Why is not that boy gone to school?" was Mr. Hollis's question, put more and more querulously after each offence, till, at last, the fiat went forth in real earnest, not to be repented of. The immediate cause was this:-The windows of the Blayfield breakfast-room opened into a little conservatory, the side panes of which were painted in illustration of Scripture history. A glazier having been sent for to effect some alterations, Master Adolphus was watching his movements from the ladder's foot, when a natural desire seized him of ascending the

same.

"Mayn't I get up along with you?" inquired Master Adolphus.

"No, sir," said the man, respectfully.

"I will, though," cried the boy, pulling doggedly at the bottom step, "see if I don't."

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'Nay, sir, you must not come up," repeated the glazier, firmly.

"Well, then, you'll come down to me," quoth the young Pickle, putting forth all his strength.

Down came man and ladder, as he predicted, but with results that had not entered into his calculations.

They dashed through a pink St. Peter with a blue key, like a couple of fanatic Puritans, scraped a little upon the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, and came to the ground with a crash among the ruins of Susannah and the Elders.

"You have been and done it now, young gent, observed the glazier; and the observation was a just one.

In three weeks from that epoch, Master Adolphus was at Miss Priscilla Campbell's, conductress of an establishment for young ladies and young gentlemen; for his health was delicate and required female supervision. He had not suffered this reverse without a struggle; he cried, he screamed, he kicked; he used, as a last resource, even a naughty oath or two, selected out of his father's extensive vocabulary. He was dreadfully indisposed, with a tongue that chalk had whitened to an extent unparalleled