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Then Pen’s uncle offered to use his influence with his Royal Highness, the Commander-in-Chief, to get Pen a commission in the Foot Guards. Pen’s heart leaped at this: he had been to hear the band at St. James’s play on a Sunday, when he went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth form, who used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight that the elder boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt or “cockshy”–he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold, with an immense bearskin cap on his head, staggering under the colours of the regiment. Tom had recognised him and gave him a patronising nod–Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick last quarter, and there he was in the centre of the square, rallying round the flag of his county, surrounded by bayonets, cross-belts, and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals–talking familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo medals. What would not Pen have given to enter such a service?

But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her by her son, put on a face full of terror and alarm, and confessed that she should be very unhappy if he thought of entering the army. Now Pen would as soon have cut off his nose and ears as deliberately and of malice aforethought have made his mother unhappy; and as he was of such a generous disposition that he would give away anything to any one, he instantly made a present of his visionary red coat and epaulettes to his mother.

She thought him the noblest creature in the world. But Major Pendennis, when the offer of the commission was acknowledged and refused, wrote back a curt and somewhat angry letter to the widow, and thought his nephew was rather a spooney.

He was contented, however, when he saw the boy’s performances out hunting at Christmas, when the Major came down as usual to Fair-Oaks. Pen had a very good mare, and rode her with uncommon pluck and grace. He took his fences with great coolness and judgment. He wrote to the chaps at school about his topboots, and his feats across country. He began to think seriously of a scarlet coat: and his mother must own that she thought it would become him remarkably well; though, of course, she passed hours of anguish during his absence, and daily expected to see him brought home on a shutter.

With these amusements, in rather too great plenty, it must not be assumed that Pen neglected his studies altogether. He had a natural taste for reading every possible kind of book which did not fall into his school course. It was only when they forced his head into the waters of knowledge that he refused to drink. He devoured all the books at home and ransacked the neighbouring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo of French novels which he read with all his might; and he would sit for hours perched on the topmost bar of Dr. Portman’s library steps with an old folio on his knees.

Mr. Smirke, Dr. Portman’s curate, was engaged at a liberal salary to pass several hours daily with the young gentleman. He was a decent scholar and mathematician, and taught Pen as much as the lad was ever disposed to learn, which was not much. Pen soon took the measure of his tutor, who, when he came riding into the court-yard at Fair-Oaks on his pony, turned out his toes so absurdly, and left such a gap between his knees and the saddle, that it was impossible for any lad endowed with a sense of humour to respect such a rider. He nearly killed Smirke with terror by putting him on his mare, and taking him a ride over a common where the county fox-hounds happened to meet.