Why, my dear fellow, one would think my friends were all as abandoned wretches as I am, by the manner in which you shrink from the notion of meeting them, but they aren't." "Do let me off," put in George, in despair.
"Not a bit of it.

But I tell you what, if you don't like them or me--" "It's not that, you know, but I've no right to associ--" "Associate with your grandmother! Come this once, and I'll never ask you again unless you like, there!" "Who are the fellows ?" asked George.
"Two of them are College men--very nice men, in my humble opinion; and, now I come to think of it, one of them, Clarke, is in against you for the `Wigram,' but everyone says you're safe; and the third is an old particular school chum, who is playing in Sandhurst team against us, and whom it is therefore my interest to incapacitate by a howling breakfast." George laughed.
"I wish you'd let him eat my share as well." "I dare say he would be equal to the occasion.

Newcome was always a good trencherman." At the name I bounded nearly out of my master's pocket.

Newcome! an old school chum of Jim Halliday's.

It must be my old master! And--yes--now I remembered, he had spoken in one of his letters to Tom Drift of going to Sandhurst Military College.