"This for you, ma'am!" cried the Boots to my mother, running up as if he had no breath left, from the labour and peril of our boxes, "and young Master Roland, ma'am,--please, ma'am, his compliments, and he is waiting for Master Tommy, ma'am." "Most polite, and most kind of her ladyship indeed! Bucephalus, what do you say to that? Which of us understands good society best; if you please, my dear, if you please to answer me? What did I tell you, on Monday week, Tommy, about what had been in my family? It requires that kind of preparation, to understand these things, my dear. But he can't go, with less than a guinea in his pocket. Pull out, Mr. Upmore." My father was obliged to do all that, except that he took five per cent., as the style of the age is, from the beauty of the guinea; and dear mother, (bearing a tear of pride in one eye, and a bigger one of sorrow in the other) went to the bag that her purse was locked in, and got out half a sovereign, and looked at it. "Don't change it, Tommy," she said, "until you don't know at all how to help it. You are going to be with great people, my pet, and you will have to do things handsomely. But they won't expect a little boy, like you, to stand treat, or tip the maids, or anything of that sort; and if you bring this back to me, you shall have it all to go to school with." Thus, with more money than I ever had before, or ever could have dreamed of owning, I sat by the side of Sir Roland Towers-Twentifold, and watched him drive his horse, which he did, as he did everything, with the greatest vigour, and capacity. We seemed to go as fast as I could fly--with science, and a strong breeze after me--and _Grip_ had to use all his legs to keep up; and I looked back sadly at the poor old bus, with father, and his German pipe, upon the box, and mother with her handkerchief waving from the window; and Roly would not stop, for me to say another word to them. Now, I need not have told all this, except for the mean charge brought against me, that I got into Twentifold Towers, and thence into public life, by trickery, by false pretences, and imposture on the part of all of us, having conspired among strangers to present my father as an Admiral--"The Admiral of the Fleet-ditch" those unprincipled jokers have dared to call him, because the old Fleet-stream comes down our valley. Possibly, if the general public (and especially the Inn) at Happystowe had not endowed my father with that Naval rank, and therein confirmed him (in spite of all protest), I might not have got my first invitation, which he cast away like a true Briton. But I leave the world at large, to judge the merits; for I have always found it waste of time to reason with malicious persons.