a diploma. In pure spite, Frumpton took to learning--late as it was, he
put himself to school--with virulent zeal he read and _crammed_ till,
Heaven knows how! he accomplished getting a diploma--stood all prescribed
examinations, and has grinned defiance ever since at Sir Amyas.

"Frumpton, delighted with the story of the _made shell_, and conceiving
me to be the enemy of his enemy, resolved, as he declared, to take me
by the hand; and, such is the magical deception of self-love, that his
apparent friendliness towards me made him appear quite agreeable, and
notwithstanding all that I had heard and known of him, I fancied his
brutality was frankness, and his presumption strength of character.--I
gave him credit especially for a happy instinct for true merit, and an
honourable antipathy to flattery and meanness.--The manner in which he
pronounced the words, _fawning puppy!_ applied to Sir Amyas Courtney,
pleased me peculiarly--and I had just exalted Frumpton into a great man,
and an original genius, when he fell flat to the level, and below the level
of common mortals.

"It happened, as I was walking home with him, we were stopped in the street
by a crowd, which had gathered round a poor man, who had fallen from a
scaffold, and had broken his leg. Dr. Frumpton immediately said, 'Send for
Bland, the surgeon, who lives at the corner of the street.' The poor man
was carried into a shop; we followed him. I found that his leg, besides
being broken, was terribly bruised and cut. The surgeon in a few minutes
arrived. Mr. Bland, it seems, is a _protege_ of Frumpton's, who formerly
practised human farriery under him.

"Mr. Bland, after slightly looking at it, said, 'the leg must come off,
the sooner the better.' The man, perceiving that I pitied him, cast such
a beseeching look at me, as made me interpose, impertinently perhaps, but