 her - but that if they parted, as they must, he would be glad to say a God
bless her, and to hope that she would remember him kindly. In his discourse with
Warrington he spoke upon these matters with so much gravity, and so much
emotion, that George, who had pronounced himself most strongly for the
separation too, began to fear that his friend was not so well cured as he
boasted of being; and that, if the two were to come together again, all the
danger and the temptation might have to be fought once more. And with what
result? »It is hard to struggle, Arthur, and it is easy to fall,« Warrington
said; »and the best courage for us poor wretches is to fly from danger. I would
not have been what I am now, had I practised what I preach.«
    »And what did you practise, George?« Pen asked eagerly. »I knew there was
something. Tell us about it, Warrington.«
    »There was something that can't be mended, and that shattered my whole
fortunes early,« Warrington answered. »I said I would tell you about it some
day, Pen - and will, but not now. Take the moral without the fable now, Pen, my
boy; and if you want to see a man whose whole life has been wrecked by an
unlucky rock against which he struck as a boy, here he is, Arthur - and so I
warn you.«
 
We have shown how Mr. Huxter, in writing home to his Clavering friends,
mentioned that there was a fashionable club in London of which he was an
attendant, and that he was there in the habit of meeting an Irish officer of
distinction, who, amongst other news, had given that intelligence regarding
Pendennis which the young surgeon had transmitted to Clavering. This club was no
other than the Back Kitchen, where the disciple of Saint Bartholomew was
accustomed to meet the General, the peculiarities of whose brogue, appearance,
disposition, and general conversation, greatly diverted many young gentlemen who
used the Back Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment and refreshment.
Huxter, who had a fine natural genius for mimicking everything, whether it was a
favourite tragic or comic actor, a cock on a dunghill, a corkscrew going into a
bottle and a cork issuing thence, or an Irish officer of genteel connections who
offered himself as an object of imitation with only too much readiness, talked
his talk, and twanged his poor old long-bow whenever drink, a hearer, and an
opportunity
