in the course of the evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned out with him to escort him thither.

CHAPTER III

The Whelp

IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint should be a hypocrite—but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes should be incapable at last of governing himself—but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities—but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.

“Do you smoke?” asked Mr. James Harthouse when they came to the hotel.

“I believe you!” said Tom.

He could do no less than ask Tom up, and Tom could do no less than go up. What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as cool, and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts, Tom was soon in a highly free-and-easy state at his end of the sofa, and more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.

Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and took an observation of his friend. “He don’t seem to care about his dress,” thought Tom, “and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is!”

Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, remarked that he drank nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.

“Thank’ee,” said Tom. “Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have had about a dose of Bounderby tonight.” Tom said this with one eye shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly at his entertainer.

“A very good fellow indeed!” returned Mr. James Harthouse.

“You think so, don’t you?” said Tom. And shut up his eye again.

Mr. James Harthouse smiled, and, rising from his end of the sofa, and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece so that he stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at him, observed:

“What a comical brother-in-law you are!”

“What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,” said Tom.

“You are a piece of caustic, Tom,” retorted Mr. James Harthouse.

There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a waistcoat, in being called Tom in such an intimate way by such a voice, in being on such off-hand terms so soon with such a pair of whiskers that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.

“Oh! I don’t care for old Bounderby,” said he, “if you mean that. I have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not going to begin to be polite now about old Bounderby. It would be rather late in the day.”

“Don’t mind me,” returned James, “but take care when his wife is by, you know.”

“His wife?” said Tom. “My sister Loo? Oh yes!” And he laughed, and took a little more of the cooling drink.

James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude, smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only to hover over him and he must give up his whole soul if required. It certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.

“My sister Loo?” said Tom. “She never cared for old Bounderby.”

“That’s the past tense, Tom,” returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger. “We are in the present tense, now.”

“Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care; third person singular, she does not care,” returned Tom.

“Good! Very quaint!” said his friend. “Though you don’t mean it.”

“But I do mean it,” cried Tom. “Upon my honour! Why, you won’t tell me, Mr.