CHAPTER ELEVEN.
HOW TOM DRIFT MADE ONE START IN LONDON, AND PREPARED TO MAKE ANOTHER.
The two months that followed my departure from Randlebury were melancholy and tedious.
It was hard for me, after the boisterous surroundings of a public school, to settle down to the heavy monotony of a dull lodging in a back street of London; and it was harder still, after being the pride and favourite of a boy like Charlie Newcome, to find myself the property of Tom Drift.
Not that Tom used me badly at first.

He wound me up regularly, and for the sake of his absent friend honoured me with a considerable share of his affection.
Indeed, for the first week or so he was quite gushing, scarcely letting me out of his sight, and sometimes even dropping a tear over me.

And I, remembering Charlie's last words, "Be good to Tom Drift," felt glad to be able to remind my new master of old times, and keep fresh the hopes and resolutions with which Charlie had done so much to inspire him.

But Tom Drift, I could not help feeling, was not a safe man.
There was something lacking in him, and that something was ballast.

No one, perhaps, ever had a greater theoretical desire to be all that was right and good, but that was not in itself enough.
In quiet, easy times, and with a guiding friend to help him, Tom Drift did well enough; but left to himself amid currents and storms he could hardly fail to come to grief, as we shall presently see.
For the first two months he stuck hard to his work he was regular at lectures, and attentive when there; he spent his spare time well in study bearing upon the profession for which he was preparing; he wrote and heard once a week from Charlie; he kept clear of the more rackety of his fellow-students; he spent his Sundays at Mr Newcome's house, and he took plenty of healthy exercise both for body and mind.
With many examples about him of industry and success he determined to make the most of his time as a student, and spoke of the life and sphere of a country doctor, for which he was training, with the enthusiasm of one whose heart is in his work.
"The more I think of it," he once wrote to his mother, who was residing abroad for her health, "the more I take to it.