He has come back to his old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger
than ever: very likely some new affection has closed round his heart and
ribs and made them comfortable, and young Pen is a man who will console
himself like the rest of us. We say this lest the ladies should be
disposed to deplore him prematurely, or be seriously uneasy with regard
to his complaint. His mother was, but what will not a maternal fondness
fear or invent? "Depend on it, my dear creature," Major Pendennis would
say gallantly to her, "the boy will recover. As soon as we get her out of
the country we will take him somewhere, and show him a little life.
Meantime make yourself easy about him. Half a fellow's pangs at losing a
woman result from vanity more than affection. To be left by a woman is
the deuce and all, to be sure; but look how easily we leave 'em."
Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means come
within the simple lady's scope. Indeed she did not like the subject or to
talk of it: her heart had had its own little private misadventure and she
had borne up against it and cured it: and perhaps she had not much
patience with other folk's passions, except, of course, Arthur's, whose
sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed very likely in many of the
boy's illnesses and pains a great deal more than Pen himself endured.
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