quick, intelligent boy with a good address, a sound constitution, and
coming of respectable parents, has a potential value which a practised
business man who has need of many subordinates is little likely to
overlook. Before his visit was over Mr Fairlie proposed to the lad's
father and mother that he should put him into his own business, at the
same time promising that if the boy did well he should not want some one
to bring him forward. Mrs Pontifex had her son's interest too much at
heart to refuse such an offer, so the matter was soon arranged, and about
a fortnight after the Fairlies had left, George was sent up by coach to
London, where he was met by his uncle and aunt, with whom it was arranged
that he should live.

This was George's great start in life. He now wore more fashionable
clothes than he had yet been accustomed to, and any little rusticity of
gait or pronunciation which he had brought from Paleham, was so quickly
and completely lost that it was ere long impossible to detect that he had
not been born and bred among people of what is commonly called education.
The boy paid great attention to his work, and more than justified the
favourable opinion which Mr Fairlie had formed concerning him. Sometimes
Mr Fairlie would send him down to Paleham for a few days' holiday, and
ere long his parents perceived that he had acquired an air and manner of
talking different from any that he had taken with him from Paleham. They
were proud of him, and soon fell into their proper places, resigning all
appearance of a parental control, for which indeed there was no kind of
necessity. In return, George was always kindly to them, and to the end
of his life retained a more affectionate feeling towards his father and
mother than I imagine him ever to have felt again for man, woman, or
child.

George's visits to Paleham were never long, for the distance from London