"So much the worse for the sons," said I, bluntly. "Nature," continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my ejaculation,--"Nature indeed does give us much, and Nature also orders each of us how to use her gifts. If Nature give you the propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she give me the ambition to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise,--but I certainly shall not work." "Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?" "And the blood in our veins, and our mothers' milk. We inherit other things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father tells you! Good boy!" I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for goodness, I never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled. However, I answered sturdily: "If you had as good a father as I have, you would not think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you." "Ah! so he is a very good father, is he? He must have a great trust in your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as he does." "I am going to join him in London." "In London! Oh, does he live there?" "He is going to live there for some time." "Then perhaps we may meet. I too am going to town." "Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness; for my interest in the young man was not diminished by his conversation, however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed. The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar,--it was low, musical, but hollow and artificial. "Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?" I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I expected to find my father, although his deliberate inspection of my knapsack must already have apprised him of that address. He listened attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to impress it on his memory; and we both walked on in silence, till, turning up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large churchyard,--a flagged path stretched diagonally across it towards the market-place, on which it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a gravestone, sat a young Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else his instrument might be called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing his crust and feeding some poor little white mice (standing on their hind legs on the hurdy-gurdy) as merrily as if he had chosen the gayest resting-place in the world. We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to his race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave the handle of his instrument a turn. "Poor child!" said I.