asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't wake
you on no account; and has been here since eleven o'clock, sir---"

"How much is it now?"

"One, sir."

"What would the best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she
saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She
wants me to cultivate my neglected genus--He, be! I say, Pen, this isn't
quite like seven o'clock school,--is it, old boy?"--and the young fellow
burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added--"Go in and
talk to the General whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him to sing
you 'The Little Pig under the Bed;' it's capital." Pen went off in great
perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his toilet.

Of Mr. Foker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a fortune
was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the most doting
mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian school from
father to son; at which place, our friend, whose name could be seen over
the playground wall, on a public-house sign, under which 'Foker's Entire'
was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of his trade, his
uncomely countenance, his inaptitude for learning and cleanliness, his
gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how a susceptible
youth, under the tyranny of his schoolfellows, becomes silent and a
sneak, may understand how in a very few months after his liberation from
bondage, he developed himself as he had done; and became the humorous,
the sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we have made acquaintance.
A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning cannot be acquired by
leaving school and entering at college as a fellow-commoner; but he was