But with that fidelity which was an instinct of his nature, Colonel Newcome thought ever of his absent child and longed after him. He never forsook the native servants who had had charge of Clive, but endowed them with money sufficient to make all their future lives comfortable. No friends went to Europe, nor ship departed, but Newcome sent presents to the boy and costly tokens of his love and thanks to all who were kind to his son. His aim was to save money for the youngster, but he was of a nature so generous that he spent five rupees where another would save them. However, he managed to lay by considerable out of his liberal allowances, and to find himself and Clive growing richer every year. "When Clive has had five or six years at school"--that was his scheme--"he will be a fine scholar, and have at least as much classical learning as a gentleman in the world need possess. Then I will go to England, and we will pass three or four years together, in which he will learn to be intimate with me, and, I hope, to like me. I shall be his pupil for Latin and Greek, and try and make up for lost time. I know there is nothing like a knowledge of the classics to give a man good breeding. I shall be able to help him with my knowledge of the world, and to keep him out of the way of sharpers and a pack of rogues who commonly infest young men. And we will travel together, first through England, Scotland, and Ireland, for every man should know his own country, and then we will make the grand tour. Then by the time he is eighteen he will be able to choose his profession. He can go into the army, or, if he prefers, the church, or the law--they are open to him; and when he goes to the university, by which time I shall be, in all probability, a major-general, I can come back to India for a few years, and return by the time he has a wife and a home for his old father; or, if I die, I shall have done the best for him, and my boy will be left with the best education, a tolerable small fortune, and the blessing of his old father." Such were the plans of the kind schemer. How fondly he dwelt on them, how affectionately he wrote of them to his boy! How he read books of travels and looked over the maps of Europe! and said, "Rome, sir, glorious Rome; it won't be very long, major, before my boy and I see the Colosseum, and kiss the Pope's toe. We shall go up the Rhine to Switzerland, and over the Simplon, the work of the great Napoleon. By jove, sir, think of the Turks before Vienna, and Sobieski clearing eighty thousand of 'em off the face of the earth! How my boy will rejoice in the picture galleries there, and in Prince Eugene's prints! The boy's talent for drawing is wonderful, sir, wonderful. He sent me a picture of our old school. The very actual thing, sir; the cloisters, the school, the head gown boy going in with the rods, and the doctor himself. It would make you die of laughing!"