He called a second
time, but the valet said his master was not at home.
So Pen went back to Fair-Oaks. True, he had retrieved his failure, had
won his honours, but he came back to his home a very different fellow
from the bright-faced youth who had gone out into college life some years
before. He no longer laughed, sang, or rollicked about the house as of
old; he had tasted of the fruit of the awful Tree of Life which from the
beginning had tempted all mankind, and which had changed Arthur Pendennis
the light-hearted boy into a man. Young, he is, of course, and still
awaiting the development which life's deeper experiences are to bring,
but nevertheless he is not again to taste the joy, the zest, or the
enthusiasm which come to careless boyhood.
Arthur Pendennis is now a competitor among the ranks of men striving
after life's prizes, and this narrative of his boyhood ends.
CAROLINE
[Illustration: Miss CAROLINE AND BECKY.]
Since the time of Cinderella the First there have been many similar
instances in real life of the persecution of youth by family injustice
and cruelty, and no case more strikingly similar than that of Miss
Caroline Brandenburg Gann, whose youthful career was one of monotonous
hardship and injustice until the arrival of her fairy prince.
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