Foker, at the head of his table, made his usual joke
about Foker's Entire. We should all of us, I am sure, have liked to see
the Major's grin, when the worthy old gentleman made his time-honoured
joke.
Lady Agnes, who, wrapped up in Harry, was the fondest of mothers, and one
of the most good-natured though not the wisest of women, received her
son's friend with great cordiality: and astonished Pen by accounts of the
severe course of studies which her darling boy was pursuing, and which
she feared might injure his dear health. Foker the elder burst into a
horse-laugh at some of these speeches, and the heir of the house winked
his eye very knowingly at his friend. And Lady Agnes then going through
her son's history from the earliest time, and recounting his miraculous
sufferings in the measles and hooping-cough, his escape from drowning,
the shocking tyrannies practised upon him at that horrid school, whither
Mr. Foker would send him because he had been brought up there himself,
and she never would forgive that disagreeable Doctor, no never--Lady
Agnes, we say, having prattled away for an hour incessantly about her
son, voted the two Messieurs Pendennis most agreeable men; and when
pheasants came with the second course, which the Major praised as the
very finest birds he ever saw, her ladyship said they came from Logwood
(as the Major knew perfectly well), and hoped that they would both pay
her a visit there--at Christmas, or when dear Harry was at home for the
vacations.
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