turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the
pillow.

"Why don't you go to sleep, my dear?" she said, with a sweet tender
smile, and sate down on the bed and took one of his hot hands.

Pen looked at her wildly for an instant--"I couldn't sleep," he said--"
I--I was--I was writing."--And hereupon he flung his arms round her neck
and said, "O mother! I love her, I love her!"--How could such a kind soul
as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature did her best:
and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness that it was only
yesterday that he was a child in that bed; and how she used to come and
say her prayers over it before he woke upon holiday mornings.

They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss Fotheringay did not
understand them; but old Cos, with a wink and a knowing finger on his
nose, said, "Put them up with th' other letthers, Milly darling.
Poldoody's pomes was nothing to this." So Milly locked up the
manuscripts.

When then, the Major being dressed and presentable, presented himself to
Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of ten minutes' colloquy that the
poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage
contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the
boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have
any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pendennis to
be very gentle with Arthur: "He has a very high spirit, and will not
brook unkind words," she hinted. "Dr. Portman spoke to him rather
roughly--and I must own unjustly, the other night--for my dearest boy's
honour is as high as any mother can desire--but Pen's answer quite