Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who brought the mail, which
used to run through Cacklefield before, away from that village and
through Clavering. At church he was equally active as a vestryman and a
worshipper. At market every Thursday, he went from pen to stall, looked
at samples of oats, and munched corn, felt beasts, punched geese in the
breast, and weighed them with a knowing air, and did business with the
farmers at the Clavering Arms, as well as the oldest frequenter of that
house of call. It was now his shame, as it formerly was his pride, to be
called Doctor, and those who wished to please him always gave him the
title of Squire.

Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis
portraits presently hung round the Doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and
Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to the
history of the originals, would vaguely say they were 'ancestors of his.'
You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in these
genealogical legends, for she generally endeavoured to turn the
conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to
their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis
of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real and
actual beings for this young gentleman as--whom shall we say?--as
Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of Christendom,
whose histories were in his library.

Pendennis's fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit of
his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the roses,
they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of the odour
of genteel life. They had out their plate, and dined each other round in