Charles Dickens.]

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS IF YOU OUTGROW IT.

21

and St. Maurice rectory boasted its occasional
dinner party, its billiard room, and its plain
carriage; while few of the poor or sick ever
went away unrelieved. Mrs. De Lisle was
good and clever woman, and educated her own
daughters; which saved money and morals at
the same time.

However, like the generality of clergymen
who have not much preferment, and who
really do good, the Rev. Augustus De Lisle
had a large family. Girls, even when edu-
cated at home, cost something; boys cost a
great deal more, and cannot be kept at home.
Two or three had been got off his hands, but
Horace had been a pet boy, kept at home a
good deal through ill health. He was very
amiable, loved his sisters and mother, and his
father had made him a capital scholar. Several
people were surprised when he took the St.
Agnus Dei scholarship, and took the " bounce '
out of the Tipton and Whortleberry boys at
the same time.

And so Horace had been sent to the Uni
versity, with the promise of eighty or a
hundred pounds a year from his father, an
odd present of fifty from an aunt, and a lot of
tears, blessings, and hints at advice from his
mother. He had now passed his first term.
He had made up his mind to take a " double
first," the Iceland scholarship, and the English
verse; he found Arnold's Thucydides a very
stupid book, and wondered how it was that
nothing " took " in the publishing way, unless
it was " translated from the German." He
believed in " stunning feeds," and began to
have some ideas on the subject of claret.

But he had still far too much love for home
to find even a lingering inclination for a further
stay. Moreover, ambition seemed to send him
homeward. The Dean had said, in a grufl
voice, " Very well, sir! " to his construing of
the " Birds " of Aristophanes; the Rev. John
o' Gaunt, his tutor, had expanded his lank lips
into a smile, and had commended his Latinity;
and here was news for his father! Again,
he wanted to see Jack Harrowgate, his old
shooting companion, to whom his favourite
sister Lucy was engaged. Jack was a tre-
mendous rough manly fellow, with a very
kind heart, and great powers of sociability.
Even Bruiser, of St. Alb-Cornice, who had
thrashed the " Bunstead Grinder," shrank
into insignificance when compared with Jack;
and Smilliugton, of St. Una de Lion, could
not sing, "Down among the dead men," half so
well. Besides all this, Horace had some few
private anxieties and doubts–––of which anon.

Great as was the readiness and frequency
with which slang phrases were bandied to
and fro at the University, there was one little
word which seemed more in use than any,
and which half the University appeared to
be living to illustrate.

When Horace first appeared at St. Agnus
Dei, one of his first proceedings was to pay
for his furniture; and to purchase the good-
will of the cups and saucers of the last

inmate of his rooms. Several other ready-
money transactions, on a small scale, evinced
his desire and intention of avoiding debt;
and as his father had not only advised him to
do so, but had furnished him with the means
of eking out the small allowance of his
scholarship, he himself felt ill-justified in
overrunning his known income.

But that word was sounding, ringing,
dinning, and booming in his ears, hour after
hour, day after day. That word was staring
in his face; whizzing before his eyes; insinu-
ating itself into his food; adulterating the
wine he drank. It stared at him in the form
of one man's boots (so much better fitting
than old Last's, at St. Maurice); in the broad
stripe of another man's elegantly-cut trousers;
in the glossy hat of another; in the faultless,
close-to-the-waste-when-unbuttoned dress coat
of another. It took all sorts of forms. It
would transfer itself into a walking-cane, at
one end of a street; and at the end of
another, it had suddenly become a plaid scarf,
or a coral-headed breast-pin. Sometimes it
would appear as a Yorkshire pie; sometimes
as a musical box. At one moment, just as
he thought it was a pair of hair-brushes, it
would suddenly turn itself into a steak and
oyster sauce at Cliften's. In the dreams of
men, it would haunt them; in their walks, it
would cling to their very feet; in their
reading moments, it lay open before them;
in their smoking ones, it fumed with them.
And that word was tick, tick, TICK.

But Horace was not in debt. Oh no! He
had only commenced a few accounts for
things which " one could not very well pay for
till the end of term;" and when the end ot
berm came, he found he was obliged to write
home for five pounds to come home with, and
this, as it was his first term, his father thought
nothing of. Then, he had " been obliged" to
order "one or two things" at Stilty and
Cabbagenet, the great tailor's; but there could
be no harm in that, because their names were
put down on the list of tradesmen his tutor
had handed him. Then, there were one or two
little presents for his sisters, and a ring and
a new watch-chain, which " he could pay for
next term," and one or two other matters–––
but "nothing of consequence."

If you had seen how Horace kissed his
sisters and mother, and how happy and how
jolly he seemed when he got home, you would
have been pleased, I think. He was certainly
more manly in speech and manner, and
more confident in expressing opinions; but
he had lost none of his social frankness and
good-nature. But Christmas was getting
lose at hand, and Horace, somehow or other,
did not evince so lively an interest in the
reparations for it as formerly. He said
something in reference to " their always boring
about mince-meat;" and he thought the charity-
school dinner might be managed cheaper and
ith less trouble at the school-house, than in
their own kitchen.