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The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray
page 32 of 1146 (02%)

Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
"Is there anything the matter with my mother?" he said. He could hardly
speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready to start.

"No," said the Major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your trunk
directly; I have got a postchaise at the gate."

Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake hands
with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the same
man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and
magnificent Princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a grey petticoat,
so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
of the schoolmaster disappeared.

"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the Doctor. "It is a pity to
take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle and
unenergetic, but he is a very honest gentlemanlike little fellow, though
I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have some
luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."

But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
should see him alive.

"There's no other son, is there?" said the Doctor. The Major answered
"No."

"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other
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