By this he meant, that I should have to come nolens volens, as we said at school; but having more faith in my father's knowledge of the world, I did not expect it. However, with mother's consent, my clothes and books were packed in my own little box, while father laughed, and said, "Please yourselves; so long as they go safe to Maiden Lane." But soon he was obliged to confess his mistake, and let mother triumph over him. For while the bus was standing at the door, and our luggage was going down heavily, and my father, in the window, was taking his last look at a great ship in the distance, a quick light sound of wheels came up the staircase; and running out that way, I saw a horse with his forehead pulled up right against the forehead of the bus-horse, as if they were playing at "conquerors." The new horse was beautiful, and full of pride; and the bus-horse looked at him, with mild reproach, between his shabby blinkers, as if he were saying—"Wait till you grow old, and you won't come flustering a poor horse-brother, with your dash, and frippery, and self-conceit."
"This for you, ma'am!" cried the Boots to my mother, running up as if he had no breath left, from the labour and peril of our boxes, "and young Master Roland, ma'am,—please, ma'am, his compliments, and he is waiting for Master Tommy, ma'am."
"Most polite, and most kind of her ladyship indeed! Bucephalus, what do you say to that? Which of us understands good society best; if you please, my dear, if you please to answer me? What did I tell you, on Monday week, Tommy, about what had been in my family? It requires that kind of preparation, to understand these things, my dear. But he can't go, with less than a guinea in his pocket. Pull out, Mr. Upmore."
My father was obliged to do all that, except that he took five per cent., as the style of the age is, from the beauty of the guinea; and dear mother, (bearing a tear of pride in one eye, and a bigger one of sorrow in the other) went to the bag that her purse was locked in, and got out half a sovereign, and looked at it.
"Don't change it, Tommy," she said, "until you don't know at all how to help it. You are going to be with great people, my pet, and you will have to do things handsomely. But they won't expect a little boy, like you, to stand treat, or tip the maids, or anything of that sort; and if you bring this back to me, you shall have it all to go to school with."
Thus, with more money than I ever had before, or ever could have dreamed of owning, I sat by the side of Sir Roland Towers-Twentifold, and watched him drive his horse, which he did, as he did everything, with the greatest vigour, and capacity. We seemed to go as fast as I could fly—with science, and a strong breeze after me—and Grip had to use all his legs to keep up; and I looked back sadly at the poor old bus, with father, and his German pipe, upon the box, and mother with her handkerchief waving from the window; and Roly would not stop, for me to say another word to them.
Now, I need not have told all this, except for the mean charge brought against me, that I got into Twentifold Towers, and thence into public life, by trickery, by false pretences, and imposture on the part of all of us, having conspired among strangers to present my father as an Admiral—"The Admiral of the Fleet-ditch" those unprincipled jokers have dared to call him, because the old Fleet-stream comes down our valley. Possibly, if the general public (and especially the Inn) at Happystowe had not endowed my father with that Naval rank, and therein confirmed him (in spite of all protest), I might not have got my first invitation, which he cast away like a true Briton. But I leave the world at large, to judge the merits; for I have always found it waste of time to reason with malicious persons.
Have I patience to think of such small fry, when I speak of the greatness of everything at Twentifold Towers, and for miles around? Not a cold, rigid, and stuck-up greatness, such as you must fold your arms to look at, and thank the Lord, in private, that you are not like it; but a warmth of beauty and of kindness shed abroad, which set me on the flutter, when I came to feel it; though my mother had provided me with fifteen pounds of lead, in the hollow at the bottom of my chest. But, at first I was frightened, as you may suppose, and kept asking myself what good would be my best clothes, even to play in, at such a place? Then Lady Twentifold came out, and kissed me, and looked at the tears in my eyes with love—because she had lost a little boy like me—and my heart went to her, so that I saw nothing of the height or size of anything, so long as I could see her, and think about her, and feel how good she was to me.
"You will see a great friend, by and by," she said. "What a distinguished boy you are, to have formed such lofty friendships! And chiefly because of your bodily gift of weighing less than you ought to weigh. Why, a boy, with the mind of a Shakespeare to come, might pour forth poem after poem, and nobody care to inquire into him. Even Professor Megalow, universal as he is, might never even chance to hear of him."