For she is not proud, and she is not vain, and she never says an unkind word behind anybody's back, and she does a deal of kindness to the poor without appearing to crow over them, you know; and she is not a bit ashamed of letting lodgings, or being poor herself, as sometimes I think some of our family----" "I thought we were going to speak no ill of them ?" says the Colonel, smiling.
"Well, it only slipped out unawares," says Clive, laughing; "but at Newcome when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great ass, Barnes Newcome, gives himself his airs, it makes me die of laughing.

That time I went down to Newcome, I went to see old Aunt Sarah, and she told me everything, and showed me the room where my grandfather--you know; and do you know I was a little hurt at first, for I thought we were swells till then.

And when I came back to school, where perhaps I had been giving myself airs, and bragging about Newcome, why, you know, I thought it was right to tell the fellows." "That's a man," said the Colonel, with delight; though had he said, "That's a boy," he had spoken more correctly.

Indeed, how many men do we know in the world without caring to know who their fathers were?
and how many more who wisely do not care to tell us?
"That's a man," cries the Colonel; "never be ashamed of your father, Clive." "Ashamed of my father!" says Clive, looking up to him, and walking on as proud as a peacock.

"I say," the lad resumed, after a pause-- "Say what you say," said the father.
"Is that all true what's in the Peerage--in the Baronetage, about Uncle Newcome and Newcome; about the Newcome who was burned at Smithfield; about the one that was at the battle of Bosworth; and the old old Newcome who was bar--that is, who was surgeon to Edward the Confessor, and was killed at Hastings?
I am afraid it isn't; and yet I should like it to be true." "I think every man would like to come of an ancient and honourable race," said the Colonel, in his honest way.