People were eager to get him to join their parties, and he was often enough too good-natured to refuse.

And thus Charlie wasted much of his time, and in the end found himself far more dissatisfied with himself than in the quiet monotony of his up-country duties.
Do not let me do him injustice, reader, in my account of him during those few weeks at Calcutta.
He was gay but not fast, frivolous though not dissipated.

His errors were errors of unprofitableness, but never of viciousness.

Even in his most frivolous moments he had never been anything but a gentleman and a good fellow.

Still, it had been unsatisfactory, and he knew it to be so in his inmost soul.
In the midst of this life came the mutiny, and, like hundreds of others, Charlie leapt at the call of duty, and flung to the winds all those attractions which had held him captive during the weeks of his idleness.
Like hundreds of others his blood boiled at the tragedies of that awful time, and now, of all the rescuing host, there was not one who loved his own life less, or his country's glory more, than Charlie Newcome.
And thus it was with him when I found him.
But to-night, whatever may have been the memories, and hopes, and regrets which secretly animated his breast in finding himself again possessed of his boyish treasure and the companion of so many of his happiest days, Charlie Newcome had no leisure to sit down and spend his time in passive contemplation.