They talked much about Charlie and his prospects.

They even consulted Tom as to the wisdom of yielding to the boy's desire for a military career, and Tom strongly supported the idea.
Then Tom's own prospects were canvassed and highly approved of by both Mr, and Mrs Newcome.
Tom already pictured himself settled down in his country practice, enjoying himself, doing good to others, and laying by a comfortable competency for future years.

On the whole, he felt, as he quitted the hospitable roof of his genial friends, that he had rarely spent a more pleasant or profitable evening.
People were thronging out of the theatre as he returned, and he could not resist the desire to stand and watch them; for a little.

He wondered what they had seen, and whether those he saw had waited for the "farce," or was that still going on ?--and he wondered if any people ever went into a theatre at so late an hour as eleven.
Ah, Tom! he did not go in that night, or the next, but he was getting himself ready for the first step.
Reader, do not mistake Tom's weakness and folly.

He was not trying to persuade himself this place was a good one for him to enter; he was not thoughtlessly going in to discover too late that he had better have stayed out.