"My dear Binnie, is it possible? You, the best scholar in all India!"
"And which amounted to exactly nothing. By the admirable seestem purshood at your public schools, just about as much knowledge as he could get by three months' application at home. Mind ye, I don't say he would apply; it is most probable he would do no such thing. But, at the cost of—how much? two hundred pounds annually—for five years—he has acquired about five and twenty guineas' worth of classical leeterature—enough, I dare say, to enable him to quote Horace respectably through life, and what more do you want from a young man of his expectations? I think I should send him into the army, that's the best place for him—there's the least to do and the handsomest clothes to wear," says the little wag, daintily taking up the tail of his friend's coat. "In earnest now, Tom Newcome, I think your boy is as fine a lad as I ever set eyes on. He seems to have intelligence and good temper. He carries his letter of recommendation in his countenance; and with the honesty—and the rupees, mind ye,—which he inherits from his father, the deuce is in it if he can't make his way. What time's the breakfast? Eh, but it was a comfort this morning not to hear the holystoning on the deck. We ought to go into lodgings, and not fling our money out of the window of this hotel. We must make the young chap take us about and show us the town in the morning, eh, Colonel?"
With this the jolly gentleman nodded over his candle to his friend, and trotted off to bed.
The Colonel and his friend were light sleepers and early risers. The next morning when Binnie entered the sitting-room he found the Colonel had preceded him. "Hush," says the Colonel, putting a long finger up to his mouth, and advancing towards him as noiselessly as a ghost.
"What's in the wind now?" asks the little Scot; "and what for have ye not got your shoes on?"
"Clive's asleep," says the Colonel, with a countenance full of extreme anxiety.
"The darling boy slumbers, does he?" said the wag. "Mayn't I just step in and look at his beautiful countenance whilst he's asleep, Colonel?"
"You may if you take off those confounded creaking, shoes," the other answered, quite gravely: and Binnie turned away to hide his jolly round face, which was screwed up with laughter.
"Have ye been breathing a prayer over your rosy infant's slumbers, Tom?" asks Mr. Binnie.
"And if I have, James Binnie," the Colonel said gravely, and his sallow face blushing somewhat, "if I have I hope I've done no harm. The last time I saw him asleep was nine years ago, a sickly little pale-faced boy, in his little cot, and now, sir, that I see him again, strong and handsome and all that a fond father can wish to see a boy, I should be an ungrateful villain, James, if I didn't do what you said just now, and thank God Almighty for restoring him to me."