His father was compelled to withdraw him from the University, at which
he had already had the honor of being plucked for "the little-go;" and
the young gentleman, on being asked for what profession he was fit, had
replied, with conscious pride, that he could "tool a coach!" In
despair, the sire, who owed his living to Trevanion, had asked the
states man's advice; and the advice had fixed me with a partner in
expatriation.

My first feeling in greeting the "fast" man was certainly that of deep
disappointment and strong repugnance. But I was determined not to be
too fastidious; and, having a lucky knack of suiting myself pretty well
to all tempers (without which a man had better not think of loadstones
in the Great Australasian Bight), I contrived before the first week was
out to establish so many points of connection between us that we became
the best friends in the world. Indeed, it would have been my fault if
we had not; for Guy Bolding, with all his faults, was one of those
excellent creatures who are nobody's enemies but their own. His good-
humor was inexhaustible. Not a hardship or privation came amiss to him.
He had a phrase, "Such fun!" that always rushed laughingly to his lips
when another man would have cursed and groaned. If we lost our way in
the great trackless moors, missed our dinner, and were half-famished,
Guy rubbed hands that would have felled an ox, and chuckled out, "Such
fun!" If we stuck in a bog, if we were caught in a thunder-storm, if we
were pitched head-over-heels by the wild colts we undertook to break in,
Guy Bolding's sole elegy was "Such fun!" That grand shibboleth of
philosophy only forsook him at the sight of an open book. I don't think
that at that time he could have found "fun" even in Don Quixote. This
hilarious temperament had no insensibility; a kinder heart never beat,--
but, to be sure, it beat to a strange, restless, tarantula sort of