honour keenly. He went through and looked at the pointers. As Flora put her nose up to his waistcoat, and Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled at his chain, Pen patronised the dogs, and said, “Poo Ponto, poo Flora,” in his most condescending manner. And then he went and looked at Laura’s hens, and at the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the dairy; perhaps he blushed to think that it was only last holidays he had in a manner robbed the great apple-tree, and been scolded by the dairymaid for taking cream. 

 They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, “formerly an eminent medical practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in this neighbourhood and county,” with one of the most handsome funerals that had been seen since Sir Roger Clavering was buried here, the clerk said, in the abbey church of Clavering St. Mary’s. A fair marble slab, from which the above inscription is copied, was erected over the Fairoaks’ pew in the church. On it you may see the Pendennis coat of arms, and crest, an eagle looking towards the sun, with the motto ‘nec tenui penna,’ to the present day. Doctor Portman alluded to the deceased most handsomely and affectingly, as “our dear departed friend,” in his sermon next Sunday; and Arthur Pendennis reigned in his stead. 

 

CHAPTER III. In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed

 Arthur was about sixteen years old, we have said, when he began to reign; in person (for I see that the artist who is to illustrate this book, and who makes sad work of the likeness, will never be able to take my friend off) he had what his friends would call a dumpy, but his mamma styled a neat little figure. His hair was of a healthy brown colour, which looks like gold in the sunshine, his face was round, rosy, freckled, and good-humoured, his whiskers (when those facial ornaments for which he sighed so ardently were awarded to him by nature) were decidedly of a reddish hue; in fact, without being a beauty, he had such a frank, good-natured kind face, and laughed so merrily at you out of his honest blue eyes, that no wonder Mrs. Pendennis thought him the pride of the whole county. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he rose from five feet six to five feet eight inches in height, at which altitude he paused. But his mother wondered at it. He was three inches taller than his father. Was it possible that any man could grow to be three inches taller than Mr. Pendennis? 

 You may be certain he never went back to school; the discipline of the establishment did not 

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