While Mrs. Pendennis was planning her son's career and had not yet settled in her mind whether he was to be Senior Wrangler and Archbishop of Canterbury, or Double First Class at Oxford and Lord Chancellor, young Pen himself was starting out on quite a different career, which seemed destined to lead him in the opposite direction from that of his mother's day-dreams, who had made up her mind that in time he was to marry little Laura, settle in London and astonish that city by his learning and eloquence at the Bar; or, better still, in a sweet country parsonage surrounded by hollyhocks and roses close to a delightful, romantic, ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached. While these plans and decisions were occupying his mother's thoughts, Pen was getting into mischief. One day he rode into Chatteris to carry to the County Chronicle a thrilling poem for the next week's paper; and while putting up his horse at the stables at the George hotel, he fell in with an old school-fellow, Mr. Foker, who after a desultory conversation with Pen strolled down High Street with him, and persuaded him not only to dine at the George with him, but to accompany him later to the theatre. Mr. Foker, who was something of a sport, was acquainted with the troupe who were then acting at that theatre, and the entire atmosphere was so new and exciting to Pen that his emotional nature, which had been waiting for many months for a sensational thrill, responded at once to the idea; and later on to the applause of pit and gallery, and to the personal magnetism of the heroine of the play, one Miss Fotheringay. To Miss Fotheringay's attractions, natural and artificial, Pen responded at once, and sat in breathless enchanted silence through all the conversations and melodramatic situations of the mediocre performance. When the curtain went down he felt that he now had a subject to inspire his Muse forever. He quitted the theatre in a state of intense excitement, and rode homeward in a state of numb ecstasy. Notwithstanding his sentimental mood, Pen was so normal in mind and body that he slept as soundly as ever, but when he awoke he felt himself to be many years older than yesterday. He dressed himself in some of his finest clothes, and came down to breakfast, patronising his mother and little Laura, who wondered at his grand appearance, and asked him to tell her what the play was about. Pen laughed and declined to tell her. Then she asked him why he had got on his fine pin and beautiful new waistcoat?