"How Tommy may turn out, is more than I can say," he exclaimed, after reading Lady Twentifold's letter, in which she apologised most gracefully, for the liberty she had been tempted to take, in begging them to spare their dear bright boy, for a few days' visit at the Towers, though she had been prevented by absence from calling upon Admiral, and Mrs. Upmore; but her dear son, Roland, who would bring this note, would explain that she had only just been told of their sudden return to London, etc., etc., all most pleasing, and put in the kindest and prettiest way--"whether Tommy will stick to the business," said father, "and make it pay better than his poor governor--as he calls me, when my back is turned--and be able, by the time he is fifty years old, to pay his way into Parliament, and represent the boiling interest, which is abominably treated there--it lies in the doom of the future to bring forth. But after all the years, I have lived in the world, although I have only been on committees, and never more than vice-chairman, I know too well what Statesmen are. If they can fish up, against one another, so much as the passing of a bad penny-piece, when they were at school together, the man at the top of the tree will never hear the last of it. If our Tommy goes on, as his schooling shows, he may happen to be heard of by and by, though there's nothing wonderful about him yet, except these lies about his flying; and none the Rads, if he turns out a Tory, and none of the Tories, if he turns into a Rad, shall ever be able to say of him then, that he started under false colours. Hand me one of my invoice-slips; there are three, or four, over in that pocket-book. I'll be as straight-forward as Bill Chumps was, with the Earl, according to Tommy's tale." "Oh, what are you going to do?" cried mother; "after all the lecture I gave Tommy, and all I have done on the sands, oh dear! It is flying in the face of Providence." "The Lord--if you mean Him by 'Providence'--loves the men He has made, to tell the truth; and the women likewise, to the extent of their powers, though not so much insisted on. Sir Roland is gone to the beach with his pony, to wait for your answer, I believe. Tommy shall take it down to him. Read it as you go, my son, and then put it in this envelope." What I had to read, and deliver, to my affable, yet rather arrogant friend, ran as nearly as may be to this effect: