 CHAPTER 27 RATS Meanwhile it shot over Grange, as well as that poor old Beckley Barton. Trouble was prevailing, and the usual style of things upset. Russell overshoot, though not beloved by everybody, because of his strong will and words, was at any rate thought much of, and would be sadly missed by all. All the women of the household made an idol of him. He spoke so kindly and said thank you when many men would have grunted, and he did not seem to be aware of any padlocked bar of humanity, betwixt him and his inferiors. At the same time he took no liberty any more than he invited it, and this fine appearance and strength of readiness made him look the master. The men on the other hand were not sure of their sorrow to see less of him. He had always kept a keen eye on them, as the master of a large house ought to do, and he always bore in mind the great truth that men on the whole are much lazier than women. Still even the worst man about the place, while he freely took advantage of the present sweet immunity, would have been sorry to hear of a thing which might drive him to seek for another place. But what were all these even all put together in the weight of their feelings? To compare with the mother of young overshoot, many might cry, but none would mourn. Nobody could have any right to mourn except herself, his mother. This was her son, and her only hope. If it pleased the Lord to rob her of him, he might as well take her soon afterwards, without any more to do. This middle-aged lady was not pious, and made no pretense to be so. Her opinion was that the Lord awarded things according to what people do, and left them at liberty to carry on, without any great interference. She knew that she always had been superfluously able to manage her own affairs, and to hear weak ladies going on and on about the will of the Lord, and so forth. Sometimes it was a trial to her manners and hospitality. In this terrible illness of her son she had plenty of self-command, but very little designation. With stern activity and self-devotion she watched him by day and by night so jealously that the nurses took offence and, fearing contagion, kept their distance, though they drew their wages. This was the time to show what stuff both men and women were made of. Fair weather-visitors and delightful gossips and the most devoted friends stood far aloof from the tainted gale, and fumigated their letters. The best of them sent their grooms to the lodge, with orders to be very careful and to be sure to use tobacco during the moment of colloquy. Others had so much faith that everything would be ordered for the best that they went to the seaside at once to be delivered from presumption. Many saw a visitation for some secret sin that otherwise might have festered inwardly and destroyed the immortal part. Of course they would not even hint that he could have murdered Grace O'Glander. Nothing was further from their thoughts, the idea was much too terrible. Still there were many things that long had called for explanation, and none had been afforded. Leaving these to go their way a few kind souls came fluttering to the house of pestilence and death. Two housemaids and the boy who cleaned the servant's shoes had been struck down and never rose again, except with very cautious liftings to their last narrow cells. The disease had spread from their master, and their constitutions were not like his. Also the senior footmen and the undercook were in their beds. A people who had their work to do believed them to be only shamming. The master, however, still fought on without any knowledge of the conflict. His mind was beyond all the guidance of will and afar from its wounded subjects. It roved among the clouds that had been blown away, nebules of logic, dialectic fogs and thunderstorms of enthememe, and the pelting of soridic hail, and all the other perturbed condition of the undergraduate weather. In these things, unlike his friend Hardenow, he had never taken delight, and now they rose up to avenge themselves. At other times a poor fellow lay in depths of deepest lethargy, voiceless, motionless, and almost breathless. None but his mother would believe sometimes that he was not downright dead and gone. Of course Mrs. Overshoot had called in the best advice to be had from the whole of the great profession of medicine, a roughness of the alberthony school was still in vogue with country doctors, and even now some of it may be found in a craft which ought to be gentle in proportion to its helplessness. With timid people this roughness goes a long way towards creating faith, and makes them try to get better for fear of being insulted about it. In London, however, this centuric school of medicine had not thriven. When the rude Nessus could not heal himself, a soft and soothing gentle race of Escopians arose, the V's-Medicatrix nature was exalted and fed with calves-feet, and the hand of velvet and the tongue of silver commended and sweetened the pill of bread. At the head of this pleasing and amiable band, who seldom either killed or cured, was the famous Sir Anthony Thistledown. This was the great physician who had been invoked from London to the strong disgust of splinters, and the foremost light at Oxford, when Squire O'Glander was seized with his very serious illness, and now Sir Anthony did his best, with the aid of the reconciled splinters to sue the way death from the weary couch of the last of the race of overshoot. A pretty story I heard in Oxford today. Made me ashamed at doth, said Zachary Cripps to his sister Eddie, while he smoked his contemplative pipe by the fire of stow logs, one cold and windy April evening. What do you think they've been endued? Who and where, Zach? How can I tell? Esther was busy trimming three rashers before she put them into the frying-pan. I really do believe you expect me to know everybody that comes to your thoughts quite as if it was in my own mind. Well, so you ought, said the Carrier. The women nowadays are so sharp, and no man can have his own mind to his self. But anyhow, you ought to know that I mean up to the poor worship overshoots. Ah, fine young gentleman has ever lived! Seemeth to be no more than last night, as he sat in that there chair, and said the quearest thing as ever were said by a justice to the county bench. What do you mean, Zach? I never heard him say anything but was kind and proper and accredited to him. Might be proper or might not, but anyhow, to our impossible. Did it tell me, or did it not, he would try to go a poaching. When folk begins to talk like that, there's a sign of the ill come over them. As me, to his little whoever-do of poaching, or shutting, or riding to the hounds, or tasting again of my best bottle, bad enough job it be about old Squire, but he be an old man in a way of poaching? Well, the Lord he knoweth best, and us be all in the hollow of his hand. But he were a fine young fellow, as fine a young fellow as I ever see, and not a bit of pride about him. Sadly reflecting, the carrier stopped his pipe with a twig from the fireplace, and gazed at the soot, because his eyes were bright. But what were you going to tell me? That he bringing her brother back to his subject as she often was obliged to do? Raleigh, I'd be almost ashamed to tell thee, for such a thing to come to pass in our own county, and almost the same parish, and only two-turned-pipe gates at wean, what do ye think of every soul in that their house running right away, without no notice, nor so much as a good-bye, one and all of them, one and all? So I were told by a truthful man, and a poor old lady with her dying son, and not a single-blessed woman for to make the pap. I never can believe that they would be such cowards, as their answer did she left her work, and came to look at Zachary. Men might, but women never, I should hope. In such a kind, good house it is. Oh, Zach, it must be a wicked story. It is true enough, Eddie, and too true. As I was a coming home, I cede five on them, standing all together, under the alms, by Magdalene College. Their friends would not take them in, I was told, and nobody wouldn't go nigh on them. Perhaps they were sorry they had do'd it, then. The wretches! They ought to sleep out in the rain, without even a pig-stie for shelter. Now, Zach, I never do anything without you. But to shut over Grange, I go to-night, unless you bar the door on me, and if you do, I will get out of a window. Aster, I never heard tell of such a thing, if you was under a duty well and good, but to fly into the face of the Lord like that, without no call upon you. There is a call upon me," she answered, flushing with calm resolution. It is the Lord that calls me, Zach, and he will send me back again. Now you shall have your supper while you think it over quietly. I will not go without your leave, brother, but I am sure you will give it when you come to think. The carrier, while he munched his bacon and drank his quart of home-brewed ale, was in his quiet mind more trouble than he had ever been before, or at any rate, since he used to pass the tent of young Sinementa. That was the one great romance of his life, and since he had quelled it with his sturdy strength, and looked round the world as usual, scarcely any trouble worse than pence and half-pence had been on him. From week to week and year to year he had worked a cheerful road of life, breathing the fine air, looking at the sights, feeling as little as need be felt the influence of nature, making new friends all along his beat, even quicker than the old ones went their way, carrying on a very decent trade, highly respecting the powers that be, and highly respected by them. But now he found suddenly brought before him a matter for consideration, which, in his ordinary state of mind, would have circulated for a fortnight, precipitance of mind to him was worse than driving down a quarry. His practice had always been, and now it was become his habit to turn every question inside out and upside down, and across and across, and finger every seam of it, as if he were buying a second hand sack, erever he began to trust his weight to any side of it. To do all this required some hours with a mind so unelectric, and even after that he liked to have a good night's sleep and find the core of his resolve set hard in the morning. For this due process there was now no time. He dared not even to begin it, knowing that it could not be wrought out. Therefore he betook himself to a plan which once before had served him well. After groping at the bottom of a sacred pocket, where sample beans and scarlet runners got into the loops of keys, and bits of whip cord were wound tightly round old turn-bike tickets, and a little shoemakers all in a cork kept company with a shoe-pick, master Cripps, with his blunt-headed fingers, got hold of a crooked six-pence. The bend alone would have only conferred a simple charm upon it, but when to the bend there was added a hole, that six-pence became delphic. Cripps had consulted it once before when a quick-tempered farmer hurried him concerning the purchase of a rick of hay. The carrier had no superstition, but he greatly abounded with gratitude, and, having made a great hit about that rick, the least he could do to the six-pence was to consult it again under similar hurry. He said to himself, Now the Lord send me right. If you comes out heads, little eddies shall go. If you comes out tails, I shall take it for a sign that we ought to turn tails in this ear-job. He said no more, but with great extrication worked his irracular six-pence up through a rattle of obstructions, like the lost caste in the steep-headed man's helmet, up came the six-pence reluctantly. I have got ye. Now what dost thou say? said Cripps, with the triumph of an obstinate man. Never a lie hast thou told me yet. Spake up, little fellow! Being thus adjured the crooked six-pence in gratitude for much friction gleamed softly in the fire-light. And even the carrier, keen as his eyes were, could not make out head or tail. Fetch me a candle in the looking-glass! He called out to Esther, the looking-glass being a large old lens, which had been left behind by Hardenow. Esther brought both in about half a minute, and Cripps, with the little coin sternly sitting as flatly in his palm as its form allowed, began to examine it carefully, with one eye shut as if firing a gun. He tried the lens at every distance from a foot to half an inch, shifting the candle about until some of his frisly hair took fire, and with this assistance he exclaimed at last, Heads, child! Heads it is! Thou shalt go! The will of the Lord ordaineth it. Plays the Lord to send thee back safe and sound as now thou goest. None on us, to my knowledge, has done ought to deserve to be punished for. CHAPTER XXVIII When a very active man is suddenly laid by the heels, sad as the dispensation is, there are sure to be some who rejoice in it. Even if it be only a zealous clerk, sausage-maker, or grave-digger, thus upset in his activities, there are one or two compeers who rejoice in the heart while they deeply lament with the lip. Not that they have the very smallest atom of ill-will about them, they are thoroughly good-hearted fellows, as are nine men out of every ten, and within as well as without. It would grieve to hear that their valued friend was dead. Still for the moment and while we believe as everybody does about everybody else, that he is sure as a top to come round again. He is relieved to have this busy fellow just out of the way a bit, and there is an inward hugging of the lazier spirit at the thought that the restless one will have received a lesson, and be pulled back to a milder state. Be this view of the matter either true or false in a general way, at least in this particular instance, the illness of Russell Overshoot, some of it seem to apply right while. There is no one who wished him positive death, not even of those whom he had most justly visited with the treadmill. But there were several who were not sorry to hear of this check to his energies, and the foremost among them might be counted Mr. Luke Sharp and the great John Smith. Mr. John Smith had surprised his friends and disappointed the entire public by finding out nothing at all about anything after his one great discovery made with the help of the British Army. For some cause or other best known to himself he had dropped his indefatigability and taken to very grave shakes of his head instead of nimble footings. He feigned to be very busy still with this leading case of the neighborhood, but though his superiors might believe it, his underlings were not to be misled. All of these knew whether Mr. John was launching thunderbolts or throwing dust and were well aware that he had quite taken up with the latter process in the Beckley case. Why or even exactly when this change had occurred they did not know, only they were sure that the reason lay deep in the pocket of Mr. Smith, which conclusion as we shall see did no more honor to their heads than to their hearts. But still, whatever his feelings were or his desires in the matter, the resolute face and active step of this intelligent officer were often to be seen and heard at Beckley, and to several persons in the village they were becoming welcome. Numbers Cripps, a butcher, was moved with gentle goodwill towards him, having heard what a fine knife and fork he played in finding it true in the squire's bill. Also Phil Hiss of the Dusty Anvil found the fame of this gentleman telling on his average receipts, and several old women who had some time back made up their accounts for a better world and were taking the interest in scandal, hailed with delight this unexpected bonus and true premium. To mention young spinsters would be immoral, for none of them had any certainty whether there was or was not any Mrs. John Smith, rustic modesty forbade that the carrier should be asked to settle this great point directly. Still there were methods of letting him know how desirable any information was. At all these symptoms of renown when brought to his knowledge Mr. Smith only smiled and shook his head. He had several good reasons of his own for hunting the village as he did, one of them being that he thus obeyed the general orders he had received. Also he really liked the squire, his vitals and his domestics. Among these latter he had quite outlived any little prejudice created by his early manner. And even Mary Hookam was now inclined to use him as an irritant or stimulant for the lukewarm crypts, but being a sharp and quick young woman Mary took care not to go too far. How is the fine old gentleman now? Mary my love, how is he? Mr. Smith asked, as he pulled off his cloak in the lobby just after church time, and just before early dinner time, a tomorrow of that Saturday night when Esther set off her shot over. Although it was spring she had not gone alone, but had taken a son of the butcher with her, the effect of that quarry seen on her nerves would last as long as she did. Mary was bound not to answer, Mr. Smith, whenever he spoke in that festive way. That much had been settled betwixt her and her mother, remembering what a place Beckley was, but she did all her duty as a good maid should in the way of receiving a visitor. She took his cloak from him and she hung it on a hook. Most men wore a cloak just then for walking, whether it were wet or dry. And part of the coming Tractorian movement was to cast away that cloak, and then Mary saw on the feathery collar a leaf bud that threatened to become a moth, according to her entomology. This she picked out, with a shoe and a shish, as she trod it underfoot, and Mr. John Smith, having terror of insects and being a very clean man, recoiled just when he was thinking of stealing a kiss. This little piece of business placed them on their proper terms again. How was your master, Miss Hookham? I hoped to find him getting better. Everything now is looking up again. No, Mr. Smith, he is very sadly thanking you, sir, for enquiring of him. He do seem a little better one day, and we all begins to hope and hope, and then there comes something all over him again. The same as might be this here cloak, sir. Throwing on the head of that there stick. But come in and see him, Mr. Smith, if you please. I thought it was the Rector when you rang. But master will be glad to see you every bit the same as if you was, no doubt. John Smith, who was never to be put down by any small comparisons, followed quick Mary with a steadfast march over the quiet matting. Potters with their broken shards had not yet made it a trial to walk, and a still greater trial to look downward on the road to dinner. In the long old-fashioned dining-room sat the squire at the head of his table. For many years it had been his want to have an early dinner on Sunday, with a knife and fork always ready for the clergyman who was a bachelor of middle age. The clergyman came or did not come according to his own convenience, without ceremony or apology. I beg you to excuse, said the squire rising as Smith was shown into the room. My absence from church this morning, Mr. Warbelow, I had quite made up my mind to go, and everything was quite ready when I did not feel quite so well as usual, and was ordered to stay at home. The squire old-glander made his fine old-fashioned bow when he had spoken, and held out his hand for the parson to take it, as the parson always did, with eyes that gave a look of grief and then fell, and kind lips that murmured that all things were ordered for the best. But instead of the parson's gentle clasp, the squire, whose sight was beginning to fail, together with his other faculties, was saluted with a strong, rough grasp, and a gaze from entirely un-clerical eyes. How is your worship? Well nicely, I hope. Charming you look, sir, as ever I see. Sir, I thank you. I am in good health, but I have not the honor of remembering your name. Smith, your worship, John Smith at your service, as he was the day before yesterday, out of sight, out of mind, the old saying is, I suppose you find it so, sir. With this home-thrust delivered quite unwittingly, Mr. Smith sat down. His opinion was that Her Majesty's service leveled all distinctions. Mr. Old-Glander gave him one glance, like the keen look of his better days, and then turned away and gazed round the room for something out of sight, but never likely to be out of mind. The old man was weak, and knew his weakness. In the presence of a gentleman he might have broken down and wept, and been much better for it, but before a man of this sort, not a sign would he let out of the sorrow that was killing him. It had been settled by all doctors, when the squire was in his first illness, that nothing should be said by Smith or anyone else without great cause, about the trouble which was ever in the heart of all the house. Nothing at least to the squire himself, for fear of exciting him fatally. Little rumors might be filtered through the servants towards him, especially through Mother Hookam, who put hopeful grains of paradise into the heavy beer of fact. Such things did the old man good. His faith in the Lord, when beginning to flag, was renewed by fibs of this good old woman, and each confirmed the other. In former days he would have resented, and nipped in the bud, kind-hearted as he was, John Smith's familiarity, but now he had no heart to care about any such trifles. He begged Mr. Smith to take a chair, quite as if he were waiting to be invited. Then weak as he was he tottered to the bell-pull, rather than ask his guests to ring. John Smith jumped up to help, but felt uncertain what good manners were. Mr. Mary, said the squire, when Mary came, you always look out of the window. I think to see the people come out of church. Never, sir, never, except whenever I feel wicked not to have been there myself. Such time it's Seameth to do me good, like smelling of the good words over there. Yes, that is very right. All I want to know is whether Mr. Warbelow is coming up here. No, sir, not this time, I believe. He seemed to have caught a young lady with him, as wore a blue cloak with three slashes to the sleeve, and a bonnet with yellow French roses in it, and a striped skirt, made of the very same stuff as I cede into cavals, no, not cavals, to other shop over the way, round the corner, likewise her head, and then Mary, bring in the dinner, if you please. This gentleman will dine with me, instead of Mr. Warbelow. Well, now, if I ever did, Mrs. Hookam exclaimed to herself in the passage, I must have been a sort of a gentleman. Master wouldn't dine a long master-crips, but to my mind, Zach would be the gentleman afore he— The squire's oblique little sarcasm, a sarcasm at all it were, failed to hit Mr. Smith altogether. He cordially accepted plate and spoon and fell to at the soup, which was excellent. The soup was followed by a fine sirloin, whereby Mr. O'Glander, through some association of ideas, could not suppress a little sigh. Never sigh at your meat, sir! Give me the carving-knife, sir, if you're unequal to the situation. To sigh at such a sirloin! Oh, fie! Fie! I was thinking of someone who always used to like the brown. The old man said in the simplest manner as if an apology were needed. Well, sir, I like the brown very much. I will put it by for myself, sir, and help you to an inner slice. Here, Mary, a plate for your master, quick! Everything will be cold, my goodness! And who sliced this horseradish, pray? For slicing it is not scraping. Mary was obliged to bite her tongue to keep in any way mannersome, when the door was thrown open and in came her mother, with her face quite white, and both hands stretched on high. Oh, my! Oh, my! A sin! I call it! A wicked, cruel, sinful sin! Widow Hookam exclaimed as soon as she could speak, All over the village, all over the parish, in two days' time, at the latest it will be, oh, how could your worship allow of it? Give your mama a glass of wine, my dear," said Mr. John Smith as the widow fell back with violent menace of fainting or worse, while the poor squire, expecting some new blow, folded his tremulous hands to receive it. Take a good drink, ma'am, and then relieve your system. That crips! Oh, that crips! exclaimed Mrs. Hookam as soon as the wine, which first went the wrong way, had taken the right direction. If ever a daughter of mine hath crips, in spite of two stockings of money, they say, what is it about crips? asked the squire in a voice that required an immediate answer. The first news of his trouble had come through crips, and now in his helpless condition he always connected the name of the carrier with a solution, if one there should be. He had done a thing he ought to be ashamed on. When Mrs. Hookam was such excitement that they were forced to give her another glass of wine, he hath brought into this parish and the bosom of his family, pestilence and death he hath, and who be he to do such a thing, a road-faring, two-penny carrier? Crips charges a good deal more than two pence, said Mr. Oglander quietly, for his hopes and fears were once more postponed. The hath brought the worst load ever were brought, cried the widow, growing eloquent, black death in the plague, and a moraine of Egypt hath come in through crips the carrier. How much will he charge Beckley, your worship? How much shall Beckley pay him, when she mourneth for her children? When she spreadeth forth her hands and seeketh north and south and cannot find them, because they are not. What is it, good woman? cried Smith impatiently. What is all this uproar? Do tell us and have done with it. Good man! replied widow Hookam tartly. My words are addressed to your betters, sir. Your worship knoweth well that Master Cale hath the even license for his Sunday dinner. Ever since his poor wife died, he sitteth with a knife and fork to the right side of our cookmaid. He were that gentile, I do assure you, although his appearance be speaketh it not, and city gents may look down on him. He had such a sense of propriety. Not a word did he say all the time of dinner to raise an objection to the weakest stomach. But as soon as he seeeth that all were done in the parlor dinner afterward, he layeth his finger on his lips and looketh to me as the prime authority, and when I ask him to speak out no secrets being among good friends, what he said were a deal too much for me, or any other Christian person. Well, well, ma'am, if your own dinner was respected, you might have showed some respect for ours. Mr. Smith exclaimed very sadly, beholding the gravy in the channel-dish margin with grease, and the noble sirloin weeping with lost opportunity. But Mr. O'Glander took no notice. To such things he was indifferent now. To keep the mind dwelling upon earthly vitals, the widow replied severely, on the Lord's day, and with the day of the Lord a hanging special over us, such things is beyond me to deal with and cause for Mr. Warbelow. Carrier Cripseth sent his sister over to nurse-squire overshoot. John Smith pretended to be busy with his beef, but Mary, who made a point of watching whatever he did, without well knowing why, startled as she was by her mother's words, this girl had her quick eyes upon his face, and was sure that it lost color, as the carves sirloin of beef had done from the trickling of the gravy. Overshoot! Nurse, Mr. Overshoot! cried the squire with great astonishment. Why, what hails, Mr. Overshoot? It is a long time since I have seen him, and I thought that he had perhaps forgotten me. He used to come very often when—but who am I to tempt him? When my darling was here in the time of my darling, everybody came to visit me. Now nobody comes, and of course it is right, there is nobody for them to look at now, and no one to make them laugh a little. She used to make them laugh, till I was quite jealous, I do believe. Not of myself, bless your heart, but of her, because I never liked her, to have too much to say to anybody, unless it was one who could understand her. And nobody ever turned up that was able in any way to understand her, except her poor old father, sir. The squire at the end of this long speech, which had been a great deal too much for him, stood up and flourished his fork, which should have been better employed in feeding him, and looked from face to face in fear that he had made himself ridiculous. Nobody laughed at him, or even smiled, and he was pleased with this, and resolved never to give such occasion again, because it would have shamed him so, and after all it was his own business. None of these people could have any idea, and he hoped they never might have. By this time his mind was dropping softly into some confusion, and feeling it so he sat down again, and drank the glass of wine which Mary Hookam kindly held for him. For a few minutes Mr. John Smith had his flourish, to let both the women be sure who he was, all about the queen, and the law of the land and the jurisdiction of the bench, and he threatened the absent crypts with three months imprisonment, and perhaps the treadmill. He knew that he was talking unswept rubbish, but his audience was female, they had listened to him without leaving off their work, and their courage increased as his did. But presently Mr. Oglander, who had seemed to be taking a nap, arose, and said as clearly as ever he had said anything in his clearest days, Mary, go and tell Charles to put the saddle on the mare at once. Oh, Lord, sir, whatever you're thinking of! Lord, a mercy, sir, I couldn't do it, I couldn't. You ain't to bend a horse back for nine four months, and your orders is to keep quiet in your chair, and not even look out of windows, sir. Do you please to go into your slippers, sir? I will not go into my slippers, Mary. I will go into my boots. I hear that Mr. Overshoot is ill, and I gather from what you have all been saying that his illness is of such a kind that nobody will go near him. I have wronged the young gentleman bitterly, and I will do my best to write myself. If I never do another thing, I shall ride to shot over this day. Order the mare, as I tell you, and the air will do me good. Please, God! CHAPTER XXIX A SPIDER'S DINNER PARTY Now is the happy time when Oxford, ever old, yet ever fresh with the gay, triennial crown of youth, was preparing itself for that sweet leisure of which it is seldom ill-prepared, being the paramount castle and strongest feudal hold of stout idolise, this fair city has not much to do to get itself in a prime condition for the noblest efforts in most arduous feats of invincible laziness. The first and most essential step is to summon all her students and send them to chapel to pay their vows. After this there need be no misgiving of fear of industry. With one accord they issue forth, all pledge to do nothing for the day, week, or month. Each intellectual brow is stamped with the strongest resolve not to open a book, and games are the spur which the clear spirit doth raise, scorn the dons, and live luxurious days. This being so, whether winter shatters the isid wave against folly bridge, or spring's arrival rustles in the wavering leaves of Magdalene, or autumn strews the chasen fragrance of so many brewers on ripe air. How much more, when the beauty of summer fosters the coy down on the lip of the junior softest, like the thistle-seed, and casts a freshman shadow hotly on the flags of High Street, now or never is the proper period not to overwork oneself, and the hour for taking it easy. But against each sacred rite and hallowed custom of the place, against each good old-fashioned smoothness, and fine-fed sequosity, a rapid stir was now arising, and a strong desire to give a shove. There were some few people who really thought that the little world in which they lay was one they ought to move in, that perfect life was not to be had without some attempt at breathing, and that a fire, though beautifully laid, gives little warmth till kindled. However these were young fellows mostly, clever in their way, but not quite sound, and the heads of houses generally speaking abode on the housetop, and did not come down. Still they kept their sagacious eyes on the movement gathering down below, and made up their minds to crush it as soon as they could be quite certain of being too late. But these things ride not upon the cart of crypts, though crypts is a theologian, when you beat his charges down. After the Easter vacation was over with too few fattening festivals, the most popular tutor of brazenose, being the only one who ever tried to teach, came back to his rooms and his cottagework with a very fine appetite for doing good, according at least to his own ideas of good and duty and usefulness, all of which were fundamentally wrong in the opinion of the other tutors, and hard now, while he avoided carefully all disputes with his colleagues, striply kept his own course, and doing more work than the other five all put together attempted, was permitted to have his own way because of the trouble there might be in stopping him. The college met for the idled term on Saturday morning as usual. On Saturday afternoon, hard now led off his old squad with two new recruits for their fifteen miles of hard walking. Athletics and training were as yet unknown, except with the eight for Henley, and this tractarian movement may have earned its name ere the birth of number ninety from the tract of road traversed, in a tow and heel track by the fine young fellows who were up to it. At any rate, that was what the country people said, and these are more often right than wrong, and the same opinion still abides with him. Hard now only took this long tramp for a sake of collecting his forces. Saturday was not their proper day for this very admirable coat tail chase, either did they swallow hill and plane in this manner on a Sunday. Lectures were needful to fetch them up to the proper pitch for striding so. Wherefore on the morrow Mr. Hard now was free for a cruise of his own account. After morning sermon at St. Mary's and not having heard of his old friend Russell for several weeks, he resolved to go and hunt him up in his own home. It was not a possible thing for this very active and spare-bodied man to lounge upon his road. However it was that he undertook he carried on the action with such a swing and emphasis that he seemed to be doing nothing else. He wore a short spencer and a long-tailed coat. Typical, to use the pet word of that age, both of his curt brevity and his ankle reaching gravity, his jacket stuck to him and his coat struck away with the power of an averse wind, while the boys turned back and stared at him, but he was so accustomed to that sort of thing that he never thought of looking round. He might have been tail-piped for seven leagues without troubling his head about it. This was a man of great power of mind and led up to a lofty standard, pure, unselfish, good, and grand, so far as any grandeur can be in the human compound, lots of all over himself in almost every corner of his ways, kind of heart and fond of children, loving all simplicity, quick to catch and glance the meaning of mind's very different from his own. He had a shy and very peculiar manner of turning his eyes away from even an undergraduate, when his words did not commend assent, as sometimes happened with freshmen full of conceit from some great public school. The manner of his mind was never to assert itself or enter into controversy. He felt that no arguments would stir himself when he had solidly cast his thoughts, and he had, of all kinds, never thought of casting his thoughts, and he had, of all courtesies, the rarest at any rate with Englishmen, the courtesy of hoping that another could reason as well as himself. In this honest and strenuous nature there was one deficiency. The Reverend Thomas Hardenow, copious of mind and active, clear of memory and keen at every knot of scholarship, patient and candid too, and not at all intolerant, yet never could reach the highest rank, through want of native humor. His view of things was nearly always anxious and earnest. His standing point was so fixed and stable that every subject might be said to revolve on its own axis during its revolution around him, and the side that never presented itself was the ludicrous or lightsome one, as he strode up the hill with the back of his leg-line concave at the calf instead of convex, whenever his fluttering skirt allowed a glimpse of what he never thought about, it was brought home suddenly to his ranging mind that he might be within view of Beckley. At a bend of the rising road he turned an end-wise down a plate of hills in between soft pillowy folds of trees the simple old church of Beckley stood, for his thoughts to make the most of it, and to guide them the chime of the gentle bells foretelling of the service at three o'clock, came on the tremulous conveyance of the wind murmuring the burden he knew so well. Old men and ancient aims, married folk and children, bachelors and maidens, all come to church. Our now-thought of the months he had spent some few years back in that quiet place of a long, laborious, lonesome days, the solid hours divided well, the space allotted for each hard drill. Then, when the pages grew dim and dark, and the bat flitted over the lattice, for the white owl sailed to the rickyard, a glory of sallying into the air, inhaling grander volumes than ever from the mortal breath proceeded, and plunging into leaves that speak of one great author only. And well he remembered in all that toil and pure delight of the Sunday, the precious balm of kicking out both legs and turning on the pillow until eight o'clock, the leisurely breakfast with the Saturday papers, instead of Aristotle, and instructive and amusing walk to church where everybody admired him. And he set the fashion for at least ten years. The dread of the parson, the demand who was known as the best of his year at Oxford, should pick out the fallacies of his old logic, and then culminating triumph of sabbatic jubilee, the dinner. The dinner wherewith the whole week had been privately gestating, up to that crowning moment when Cripps, in a coat of no mean broad cloth, entered with a dish of Cripsic size, with the trimmings coming after him on a tray and lifting the cover with a pant and flourish, said, Well, sir, now what do ye please to think of that? Nor in this pleasant retrospect of kindness and simplicity was the element of rustic grace and beauty wholly absent, the slight young figure that flitted in and out with quick desire to please him. The soft pretty smile with which his improvements of beckley dialect were received, and the sweet gray eyes that filled with tears so, the day before his college, met. Hard now had feared, humble-minded as he was, that the young girl might be falling into liking him too well, and he knew that there might be on his own part too much reciprocity. Therefore, much as he loved Cripps, and fully as he allowed for all that was to be said upon every side, he had felt himself bound to take no more than a distant view of beckley. Even now after three years and a half there was some resolve in him to that effect, or the residue of a resolution, he turned from the gentle invitation of the distant bells and went on with his face set towards the house of his old friend Overshoot. When he came to the lodge, which was like a great beehive stuck at the end of a row of trees, it caused him a little surprise to find the gate wide open, and nobody there. But he thought that, as it was Sunday, perhaps the Lodge people were gone for a holiday, and so he treached onward, and met no one to throw any light upon anything. In this way he came to the door at last, with a fine old porch of perbec stone heavily overhanging it, and the long wings of the house stretched out, with empty windows either way. Hard now rang, and knocked, and then set to and knocked and rang again, and then sat down on a stone bolstrade, and then jumped up, with just vigor renewed, and pushed and pulled, and in every way worked to the utmost degree the capacity of everything that had ever been gifted with any power of conducting sound. Nobody answered. The sound of his energy went into places far away, and echoed there, and then from sony corners came back to him. He traced the whole range of the windows and caught no sign of any life inside them. At last he pushed the great door and lo! there was nothing to resist his thrust, except its sullen weight. When Hard now stood in the old-fashioned hall, which was not at all maronial, he found himself getting into such a fright that he had a great mind to go away again, if there had only been anybody with him. However inferior in the mental power, he might have been able to refresh himself by demonstrating something, and then have marched on to the practical proof, but now he was all by himself in strange, non-accountable loneliness. The sense of his condition, perhaps, induced him to set to and shout. The silence was so oppressive that the sound of his own voice almost alarmed him by its audacity. So, after shouting rustle thrice, he stopped and listened, and heard nothing except that cold and shuddering ring as of hardware and frosty weather. Great stone and plaster and timber gave when deserted by their lords. Mankind. Knowing pretty well all the chief rooms of the house, Hard now resolved to go and see if they were locked, and grasping his black holly-stick for self-defense, he made for the dining-room. The door was wide open, the cloth on the table, with knives and forks and glasses placed, as if for a small dinner-party. But the only guest visible was a long-legged spider, with a sound and healthy appetite, who had come down to dine from the oak beams overhead, and was sitting in his web between a cleric bottle and a crew at stand, ready to receive, with a cordial clasp, any eligible visitor. Hard now tasted the water in a jug and found it quite stale and nasty. Then he opened a napkin, and the bread inside it was dry and hard as biscuit. Then he saw was still further surprised that the windows were open to their utmost extent, and the basket of plate was on the side-board. "'My old friend Russell, my dear old fellow,' he cried with his hand in his heart, where lurked disease as yet unsuspected. "'What strange misfortune has befallen you! No wonder my letter was left unanswered. Perhaps the dear fellow is now being buried, and everyone gone to his funeral. But no! If it were so, these things would not be thus. The funeral feast is a grand institution. Everything would be fresh and lively. In five leaves put into the dinner-table. With his true reflection he left the room to seek the solution elsewhere. He failed, however, to find it in any of the downstairs sitting-rooms. Then he went even into the kitchen, thinking the liberty allowable under such conditions. Great was cold in the table-bear, on one lay adrift of soot. On the other, a level deposit of dust, with a few grimy implements to distribute it. Har now made up his mind for the worst. He was not addicted to fiction, as happily was indicated by his good degree, but he could not help recalling certain eastern and even classic tales, and if he had come upon all the household sitting in native marble, or from the waistband downward turned into fish, or logs, or dragons, he might have been partly surprised, but must have been wholly thankful for the explanation. Failing, however, to discover this, and being resolved to go through with the matter, the tutor of brazenose mounted the black oak staircase of this enchanted house. At the head of the stairs is a wide, low passage leading right and left from a bolstrated gallery. The young man chose first the passage to the right, and tightening his grip of the stick, strode on. CHAPTER XXXI The doors of the rooms on either side were not only open, but fastened back. The sashes of the windows were all thrown up, and the rain, which had followed when the east wind fell, had entered and made puddles on the sills inside. Such a draught of air rushed down the passage that hard-nosed lengthy skirts flickered out in the orthodox fashion behind him. At the end of this passage he came to a small alcove, fenced off with a loose white curtain, shaking and jerking itself in the wind. He put this aside with his stick, and two doorways leading into separate rooms, but with no doors in them faced him. King told him that both these rooms held human life or human death. First he looked at the one on the left. He expected to see lonely death, perhaps corruption, or he knew not what. His nerves were strong or un-strong, whichever is the medical way of putting it, to such a degree that he wholly forgot or entirely put by everything except his own absorbing sense of his duty as a man in holy orders. This duty had never been practiced yet in any serious way, because he had never been able to afford it. It cost so much more money than it brings in. However, in the midst of more lucrative work he had felt that he was sacred to it, rich or poor, and he often had a special hankering after it. This leaning towards a cure of souls had a good chance now of being gratified. In the room on the left hand he saw a little bed, laid at the foot of a fat fore-poster, which with carved mouths grinned at it, and on this little bed of white, without curtain or trimming or tester, lay a lady, or a lady's body, cast down recklessly in sleep or death, with a face entirely covered by a silvery cloud of hair. From the manner in which one arm was bent hard now thought that the lady lived there was nothing else to show it. Being a young man, a gentleman also, he hung back and trembled back from entering that room. Without any power to resolve things well, as he always directed his pupils to do, Har now stepped to the other doorway and silently settled his gaze inside. His eyes were so worried that he could not trust them until he had time to consider what they told. They told him a tale even stranger than that which had grown upon him for an hour now, and passed from a void alarm into terror. They showed him the loveliest girl, according to their rendering, that ever they had rested on till now, a maiden, sitting in a low chair, reading silently sometimes and sometimes in a whisper, according to some signal perhaps at which he saw no sign. There was no other person in the room so far as he could see, and he strained his eyes with extreme anxiety to make out that. The Reverend Thomas Hard now knew, as clearly as his keen perception ever had brought any knowledge home, that he was not discharging the functions now, unless they were too Catholic, of the sacerdotal office, in watching a young woman through a doorway without either leave or notice, but though he must have been aware of this, it scarcely seemed now to occur to him. Or whether it did or did not, he went on in the same manner, gazing. Girl could not see him, it was not fair play. The width of the great windows, for instance, kept up such a rattling of blinds and such flapping of cords that even the floor was so strewn with herbs, for the sake of their aroma, that anybody might quite come close to anybody who had cast away fear, in the vast despair of prostration, without any sense of approach until perhaps and was laid upon shoulder. Hard now took no more advantage of these things than about half a minute. In that half minute, however, his outward faculties, being all alive with fear, rendered to his inward, and endiathetic, organs a pitcher, a schema, or a plasm, the proper word may be left to him, such as would remain inside at least while the mind abode there. The sound of low, laborious breath pervaded the sick room now and then, between the creaking noises and the sighing of the wind. In spite of all drafts the air was heavy with a scent of herbs strewn broadcast to prevent infection, tancy warmwood, roux, and sage, burnt lavender and rosemary. The use of acids and malignant fevers was, at that time, much in vogue, and saucers of vinegar, and verjuice, seeped lemon peel and such like, as well as dozens of medicine-bottles stood upon little tables. Still Hardinaud could not see the patient, only by following the glance of the reader could he discover the direction. It was the girl herself, however, on whom his wandering eyes were bent. At first he seemed to know her face, and then he was sure that he must have been wrong. The sense of doing good and the wonderful influence of pity had changed the face of a pretty girl into that of a beautiful woman. Hardinaud banished his first idea and wondered what strange young lady this could be. Although she was reading aloud and doing it not so very badly, it was plain enough that she expected no one to listen to her. The sound of her voice, perhaps, was soothing to someone who understood no words, as people, in some of the many unknown conditions of brain, had been soothed and recovered by a thread of waterfall, broken with a walking-stick. At any rate she read on, and her reading fell like decent poetry. Hardinaud scarcely knew what he ought to do, and he did not like to go forward, and it was a mean thing to go backward, rendering no help, when help seemed wanted so extremely. He peeped back into another room, and there was the lady with the fine white hair sleeping as soundly as a weary top driven into dreaming by extreme activity of blows. Nothing less than a fine idea would have delivered Hardinaud from this bad situation. It was suddenly become upon his mind that the house had a rare old fire-bell, a relic of nobler ages, hanging from a bar in the little open cot, scarcely big enough for a hen-roost, and Russell had shown him one day, with a laugh, the corner in which the rope hung. There certainly could be but very little chance of doing harm by ringing it. What could be worse than the present state of things? Some good Samaritan might come. No Levite was left to be driven away. For Hardinaud understood the situation now, the meaning of a very short paragraph in the Oxford paper of Saturday, which he had glanced at and cast by, came distinctly home to him. The careful editor had omitted name of person and of place, but had made his report quite clear to those who held a key to the reference. How very dull-witted now I must be, cried the poor young fellow in his lonely trouble. I ought to have known it, but we never know the dearest things until too late. It was not only for the sake of acquitting himself of an awkward matter, but also in the hope of doing good to the few left desolate, that Hardinaud moved forth his legs from the windy white curtain away again. He went down the passage at a very great pace, as nearly akin to a run as the practice of long, steady walks permitted, and then at the head of the staircase he turned and remembered a quiet little corner, here, in an out-of-the-way recess, a rope of the alarm bell hung, and he saw it, even in that niche, moving to and fro with a universal draught. Hardinaud seized it and rang such appeal as the old bell had never given tongue to before. The bell was a large one, sound and clear, and the call must have startled the neighbourhood for a mile if it could be startled. Surely I do believe I have roused somebody at last," exclaimed the ringer, as he looked through a window commanding the road to the house, and saw a man on horseback coming. But surely, unless he sprang out of the ground, he must have been coming before I began. In this strange loneliness almost any visitor would be welcome, and Hardinaud ran towards the top of the stairs to see who it was and to meet him, but here, as he turned the corner of the bull-straighted gallery, a scared and hurrying young woman almost ran into his arms. Oh! What is it? She cried drawing back and plushing to a deeper colour than well-extracted blood can show. There is no funeral yet, he is not dead. Who is ringing the bell, so? It has startled even him, and will either kill or save him. Kill him, it will kill him, I am almost sure. Buster! Miss Cripps, what a fool I am! I never thought of that. I did not know. How could I tell? I am all in the dark. Is it Russell Overshoot? Yes, Mr. Hardinaud. Everybody knows it. Everyone has taken good care to run away. Even the doctors will come no more. They say it is hopeless, and they might only infect their other patients. I fear that his mother must die too. She has taken the fever in a milder form, but walk she will while walk she can, and at her time of life it is such a chance, but I cannot stop one moment. And at your time of life it is nothing, Esther. You seem to think of everybody but yourself. Is this fair to your own hearth and home? While he was speaking he looked at her eyes, and her eyes were filling with deep tears, a dangerous process to contemplate. Oh, no, there is no fear of that! She answered misunderstanding him. I shall take good care not to go home until I am quite sure there is no risk, but is not what I mean. I mean supposing you yourself should catch it. If I do they will let me stay here, I am sure, but I have no fear of it. The hand that led me here will lead me back again, but you ought not to be here. I am quite forgetting you. Hardinaud looked at her with admiration warmer than he could put into words. She had been thinking of him throughout. She thought of everyone except herself, even in a moment of first surprise. She had drawn away so that she stood to leeward. And while they were speaking she took good care that the current of wind passed from him to her. Also in one hand she carried a little chafing-dish, producing lively fumigation. Now, if you please, I must go back to him. Nothing would move him. He lay for hours as a log lies in a stone. I could not have knowledge whether he was living, only for his breathing, sometimes like a moan. The sound of the bell seemed to call him to life, for he thought that it was his own funeral. His mother is with him, worn out as he is, a lady awoke at this rambling. She sent me to find out the meaning. Now, sir, please go back round the corner. The shivering wind comes down the passage. Hardinaud was not such a coward as to obey her orders. He even wanted to shake hands with her, as in her girlhood he used to do when he had frightened this little pupil with too much amundation. But Esther curtsied at a distance and started away, until her retreat was cut off very suddenly. Why, oh, girl, oh, girl, and young man in a corner! What is the meaning of all this? I have come to see things righted. My name is Worth O'Glander, and I find this here old house silent as a grave, and you two looking like a brace of robbers. Young woman! Young woman! Why, bless me now, if it isn't our own Eddie Cripps. I did believe and would believe, but for knowing of your family, Eddie, and your brother, Cripps the Carrier, that here you are for the purpose of setting this old mansion afire. Esther, having been hard set to sustain what had happened already, as well as unblessed with a wink of sleep since Friday night, was now unable to assert her dignity. She simply leaned against the wall and gently blew into the embers of her disinfecting stuff. She knew that the squire might kill himself, after all his weeks of confinement, by coming over here in this rash manner and working himself up so. But it was not her place to say a word, even if she could say it. Mr. O'Glander, said hard now, coming forward and offering his hand, while Esther looked at them from beneath a cloud of smoke, I know your name better than you know mine. You happened to be on the Continent when I was staying in your village. My name is Thomas Harden now. I am a priest of the Anglican Church, and have no intention of setting anything on fire. Lord bless me, Lord bless me, are you the young fellow that turned half the heads of Beckley and made the Oxford examiners all tumble back like dead herrings with their jaws down? Cripps was in the schools and he told me all about it, and you were a friend of poor overshoot. I am proud to make you acquaintance, sir. Master Cripps has inverted the story, I fear, hard now answered with a glance at Esther, while he could not without rudeness get his hand out of the ancient squires, which clung to another in this weak time as heartily as it used to do. The examiners made a dry herring of me, but I am very glad to see you, sir. I have heard of, at least, I mean, I feared, that you were in weak health almost. Not a bit of it. I was fool enough, or rather I should say my sister, to have a lot of doctors down, fellows worth their weight in gold or at any rate in brass. Every day of their own blessed lives, and yet with that temptation even, they cannot lengthen their own days. Of that I will tell you some other time. They kept me indoors, and they drenched me with the physics, this, that, and the other. God bless you, sir, this hour of the air with my own good mare under me. This has done me more good, but my head goes round, just a little, not anything to notice. Eddie, my dear, don't you be afraid? With these words the squire sank down on the floor, not through any kind of fit or even loss of consciousness, but merely because his fine old legs being quite out of practice for so many weeks, they found it a little more than they could do to keep themselves firm in the stirrups, and then carry their master up slippery stairs, and after that to support a good deal of excitement among the trunk-parts. CHAPTER XXXI In all my life I never knew such a very extraordinary thing, said Squire Oglander on the following Tuesday to his old friend Dr. Splinters. Why look you here! He was wholly given up by the very first man in London, that poor young fellow was. Can you deny that, Splinters? Well, between you and me in the doorpost, Squire, answered his learned visitor, I am not quite so sure that Sir Anthony is quite the rose and crown of the profession. He may be a great court-card in all that, and the rage with all the nobility. But for all that, Squire, there are good men in comparatively obscure positions, men who have devoted their lives to science from the purest motives, modest men, sir, who are thankful to pocket their poor guinea, men who would score in any handle to their name or any shabby interloping, sir. I say there are darn good men. But even you, Splinters, come now, even you gave him up, unless we are wholly misinformed. Not at all. That was quite the mistake. The fact was simply this. When Sir Anthony pronounced his opinion at our last consultation, it was not my place to contradict him. We never do that with a London man. But I ventured in my own mind to differ even from our brilliant light, sir, for I said to myself, First, see the effect of the remedial agent which I myself, in the absence of this Londoner, have exhibited. I was suddenly called away to retrieve a case of shocking blundering by a quack at Ifley. That is why you do not see me, squire. Oh, yes, to be sure. I quite see now," answered Mr. O'Glander with a quiet internal wink. And when you came you found the most wonderful effect from your remedial agent. That I did. Something I could scarcely have believed. Soft, sweet sleep, a genial perspiration, an equipo-pulse. Nice gentle breathing, the very conditions of hygiene which Sir Anthony's efforts could never produce. Why, my good sir, in all the records of the therapeutic art there is no example of such rapid efficacy. I think it will henceforth be acknowledged that Dr. Splinter's knows what he is about. My dear friend, you know that there is nothing I dislike so much as the appearance of vaunting. If I had only condescended to that, nobody could have stopped me, sir. But no, squire, no. I have always been the same, and I have not an enemy except myself. You may say more than that, sir, a great deal more than that. You may say that you have many friends, doctor, who admire your great abilities. But as to Russell Overshoot, if the poor fellow does come round the general belief will be that he must thank the fire-bell. The fire-bell! My dear sir, in this age of advanced therapeutics, O'Glander, you must know better than to listen to that low story. Splinter's, I know that foolish tales are told about almost everything, but being there myself I thought there might be something in it. Nothing whatever. I never heard such nonsense. I was quite angry with Esther Cripps. What can chits of girls know? They must have their chatter. I suppose they must. So the squire, sadly, thinking of his own, dear Grace, still they may be right sometimes. At any rate, doctor, the fire-bell did as much good as your medicine did. Take another glass of wine. I would not hurt your feelings for the world, my dear old friend. O'Glander! Answered Dr. Splinter's, putting up his great gold spectacles, so that beneath them he might see, for he never could see through them, how to pour out his fine glass of port. O'Glander, you have something or other that you are keeping in the background. Squire, whatever it is, outward it. Between you and me, sir, there should be nothing but downright yes or no. Mr. O'Glander? Downright yes or no, sir. Of course, of course. So the squire relapsing into some quiet mood again. That was how I always liked it, Splinter's. You must know I did, and I never meant anything against it, by bringing this here little bottle back. It may have saved the poor boy's life, and of course it did, if you say so. But the seal is still on the cork, and the stuff all there. So it may do good again. I daresay the good came through the glass. You doctors have such devices. Mr. O'Glander took a small square bottle from his inner peculiar pocket, and gave it to the doctor, so as not to disturb his wine-glass. How the deuce did you get a hold of this? cried Splinter's, being an angry man when taken without notice. This is some of that girl's insolent tricks. I call her an insolent and wicked girl. I call her a good and brave girl, the very best girl in Beckley since. But my dear Splinter's, you must not be vexed. She told me that you had the greatest faith in this last idea of yours, and it struck me at once that you might wish to try it in some other case. And so I brought it. You see, it has not been opened. It doesn't matter whether it was used or not, cried Splinter's vehemently. There is the stuff, sir, and here is the result. Am I to understand, sir, that you deny the existence of Providence? Far be such a thing from me! the squire replied with a little indignation at such an idea, and then remembering that Splinter's was his guest, he changed the subject. How could I help, having faith in the Lord, when I see his care made manifest? Why, look at me, Splinter's. I am twice the man I was last Sunday morning. Why is it so? Why, because it pleased a gracious Providence to make it my duty as a man to ride. To ride, sir, a very considerable distance, on a mare who had been eating her head off. Unvowed that I never could do it, and my good housekeeper locked me in, and when I unscrewed the lock she sent two men after me to pick me up. Very good, sir, here I am, enjoying my glass of port, with the full intention of having another. Yesterday I sent to our road contractor for a three-headed and double-handed hammer, and Kale smashed up in about two minutes three hundred and twenty medicine bottles. They will come in for the top of the orchard wall. Squire, answered Splinter's with a twinkling eye, it is not at all impossible that you may be right. There are some constitutions so perverse that to exhibit the best mermedial agent is just the same thing as to reason with a pig, but it is high time for me to be jogging on my road. If Beckley, in shot-over, discard my extremely humble services, or other places in the world, sir, besides Beckley, in shot-over, there is no other place in the world for you except Beckley, for some hours, my friend. We have known one another long enough to allow for one another now. I would have arranged a rubber for you, but—but, well, you know what I mean—sadly selfish, but I cannot help it. The doctor, though vain and irritable, was easily touched with softness. He thought of all his many children. One of the long pain he had felt at losing one out of a dozen. Then without process of thought he felt for the loss of one, where one was all. Oh, Glander, you need not say another word. He answered, putting forth his hand to squeeze any trifle away between them. A rubber in winter is all very well, and so it is in summer, at the proper time. But on a magnificent spring evening to watch the sunset between one's cards is not. I mean that it is very nice indeed, but still it ought scarcely to be done, when you can help it. Now I will take the leastest little drop of your grand curacao before I smoke. And then, if you have one of those old manillas, I am your man for a stroll in the garden. To go into a garden in good weather soothes the temper. The freedom of getting out of doors is a gracious joy to begin with, and when the first blush of that has passed, without any trouble there come forward so many things to be looked at, even since yesterday, if we had the good hap to see them yesterday, many thousand of little things have spent the time in changing, even with the weather scarcely different from yesterday's, though different must in some small points when in its most consistent mood. Even with no man to come and dig and fork and roll and by all human devices harass, and even without any children dancing, plucking, pulling, trampling, and enjoying their blessed little hearts, as freely as any flower does. Yet in the absence of all those local contributions towards variety, variety there will be for all who have the time to look for it. The most observant and delightful poets of the present age, instead of being masters of nature, prefer to be nature's masters. Having obtained this power they use it with such diligence and spirit that they make the peach and the apple bloom together, and the plum keep the calendar of the lilac, once in a way such a thing does almost happen, without the poet's aid, that is to say when a long cold winter is broken by a general outburst waking every dormant life, and after that a repressive chill returns and lasts to the May month. At such a time when hope deferred springs anew as hope assured, the fear breaks into fluttering joy, and the faith moves steadily into growth. Then a truly poetic confusion arises in the works of earth. In such a state of things the squire and the doctor walk to and fro in the garden. The squire still looking very pale and feeble, but with the help of his favorite spud, managing to get along and enjoy the evening. The blush of the peach wall was not over, and yet the trellis' apple tree was softly unsheathing puckered buds all in little clusters pointed like rosettes of coral. The petals of the plum bloom were still hovering with their edges brown. Although in a corner near a chimney positively a lilac bush was thrusting forth those vivid jags which lift and curve themselves so swiftly into plumes of beauty, the two good gentlemen were surprised, each one a particularly to hear what the other thought of it, but neither would deign to ask, and either fear to speak his thoughts for fear of giving the other an advantage, because they were rival gardeners, and so they avoided the subject. This is the very first cigar, so the squire as they turned at the end of the peach wall over against a young, gross mignonne beautifully trained on the Seymour system, and bright with a central glow of pistol, although the petals were dropping. My very first cigar since that—you know what I mean, of course—since I have cared whether I were in my garden or in my grave, but the Lord supports me, Providence is good, or how could I be smoking this cigar? You must not learn to look at things in that way," Dr. Splinter answered. O'Glander, you must learn to know better. You are in an uncomfortable frame of mind, or you would not have flouted me with that bottle, after all our friendship. Why, bless me, only look around you. Badly pruned as your trees are, what a picture there is of largeness. Yes, Splinter's, more than you could find in yours, which you amputate into a doctor's bamboo. But now perhaps you may doubt it, Splinter's, because your trees are so very poor, but I have not felt any pride at all, any pride at all in one of them. What is the good of lovely trees, with only one self, to enjoy them? Now, O'Glander, there you are again. How often must I tell you your poor little gracy's gone, of course, and a nice little thing she was, to be sure? But here you are again, as well as ever, at any rate as positive. I judge a man's state of health very much by his powers of contradiction, and yours are first rate. Go to, go to. You are equal to another wife. Take a young one, and have more gracy's. Splinter's, do you know what I should do? Mr. O'Glander answered with his spudlop lifted. If my powers were such as you suppose, because I smashed your bottles? Yes, I daresay you would knock me down, and never beg my pardon till the wedding breakfast. You are right in the first part, but wrong in the second. Oh, doctor, is there no one able to share the simplest thoughts we have? To minister to a mind diseased, first he must have his own mind diseased, as all the blessed poets have. But look, the green fly, who would ever believe it after our Siberian winter? The aphis is hatched in your young peach-shoots before they have made even half a joint. That comes of your Seymour system. Ridiculous! answered the squire. But never mind, what matter now? Then you really do think Splinter's, now as an old friend tried to tell me, in pure sincerity, do you think that I have all together lost my gracy? Oh, Glander, no, I can truly say no. We are all good Christians, I should hope. She is not lost, but gone before. But, my dear fellow, will you never understand that she ought to have gone long after? It is all very well for you who have got some baker's dozen of little ones and lost only one in the measles. Forgive me, I know it was hard upon you. I say things that I should not say. But if you could only bring your mind, however I dare say you have tried to do it, and what right have I to ask you? Splinter's, I know I am puzzle-headed, and many people think me worse than that. But you have the sense to understand me, because for many years you have been acquainted with my constitution. Now Splinter's tell me, in three words, shall I live to see my gracy? That you will, squire, and to see her married, and to dance on your lap her children. So said Dr. Splinter's, fearing what might happen, if you did not say it. Only to see her, that is all I want, and to have her in my arms once more, and to hear her tell me, with her own true tongue, that she never ran away from me, after that I shall be ready for my coffin, and know that the Lord has ordered it. Here comes more of your dust into my eyes. Splinter's, will you never learn how to knock your ash off? END OF CHAPTER XXXII. CRIPS ON CELEBUSY Whatever might or may be said by any number of the most able and homicidal physicians, Russell Overshoot will believe as long as he draws breath of life that by the grace of the Lord he owes that privilege to the fire-bell. In this belief he has always been most strongly supported by Esther Cripps, who perhaps was the first to suggest the idea, for he at that time must have failed to know a fire-bell from a water-bucket. The doctors had left him, through no fear of their own lives but in despair of his. There was far less risk of infection now than in the earlier stages. No sooner, however, did the household find out that the medical men had abandoned the case, than panic seized their gallant hearts, and with one accord they ran away, from Saturday morning till Saturday night. When Esther came from Beckley there was nobody left to watch and soothe the poor despairing misery, except the helpless and worn-out mother. One thing is certain, and even the doctors, with their usual sharpness found it wise to acknowledge this, both Mr. Overshoot and his mother must have been dead bodies with little hope of Christian burial. If that brave girl had not set forth, without any one even asking her, on the Saturday night to help them, Mrs. Overshoot had quite thrown up all hope of everything, save the mercy of God in a better world, and his justice upon her enemies. Then quite in the dark this young girl came while she was lying down on her back and curtsied and asked her pleasure. If Esther had not curtsied perhaps Mrs. Overshoot, in that state of mind, would have taken her for an angel, though Eddie's bonnet made by herself was not at all angelical, but she knew her for one of the lower orders, who bent knee instead of neck, and belonging herself to a fine old race, she rallied her last energies with a power of condescension. However, these are medical, physical, social, economical, and perhaps even psychological questions, wherein what remains except perpetual inquiry. Enough is to say that Russell Overshoot, having long had a ringing in his ears, was wrung out of that, and wrung back to life by the lively peel of the fire-bell, and ever since that, whenever he is ill, though it be only a little touch of gout, he immediately sends a good corpulent man to lay a hold of the rope and swing to it. These things are of later date, for the present this young man, although he certainly had turned the corner, lay still in a very precarious state, with a feeble mother to pray for him. As this Overshoot held that the same vile fever, but in a very different form, as at her time of life was natural, with her it was intermittent, low, stealthy, and undermining. It never affected her brain, or drove her in a furious calenture, but rooted slowly inward, preying on her life quite leisurely. Her cases differed, as a knock-down blow differs from a quiet grasp. But though the house lay still in sadness, loneliness, and dull suspense, and though the doctors, having abandoned the case, had the manners not to come again, still from day to day there was some little growth of liveliness. Hardenow came almost daily, having put his class of striders under a deputy six-leaguer. The squire also might be expected whenever Mother Holcomb led him out. And even Zachary Cripps renewed an old washing in that direction. He came with the hoops of his cart taken out, because of the beautiful weather, and four good baskets of clothes for to wash, whose wearers were happy enough to have no idea where their things were. And quite at the center of his gravity, as felt by himself and endorsed by Daven, anybody getting up with a curious eye might well have beheld a phenomenon. Over here stood a very large pickling-tub, with a cover taken off for the sake of air. Around the sides was salted pork, hands and springs and belly pieces, and in the middle was a good-sized barrel of the then existent native. Feeden! Cried Cripps with his coattails up while tugging at his heavy tub. Feeden, Eddie, what's whoever you do? Salt is the main thing for a now. I have here tell that they burns away every bit of the salt inside them, and these here bouts of fever. If you can replace them, life comes round, or else they goes off, like the snuff of a candle. Bless me, I must be getting very missile, or never should have a job to lift this here. Now, the quality of this pickle you know well, for the most part fell on your shoulders. Home-bread, home-born, home-fed, home-slaughtered, and home-salted. That's what I call pork. Yes, to be sure, Zach. Eddie answered, lying her hand to the tub upon the shaft stock, while Dobbin wagged his tail at her. But what have you got in this very small cask, sitting in the middle of all the brine? Why, you know, Eddie, you must have seeded me bringing them for all the great folk about Christmas, Tide. Oysters is living the sea and must be salt inside of their barrels, so I clapped them in here for a fresh smack of it. An uncommonly strengthening things they be if you take them with a know of the Treblex. Likely his worship will be too weak to keep them down with the covers on yet, as is the proper way, they tell me. So you best way take out the hearts and give them. Oh, brother, cried Esther, remembering suddenly, I ought not to be talking to you like this. Whatever could I be thinking of? What would the people at Beckley say? They would fear to come nigh you for a month, Zach, and your business would be ruined. Don't do jog on, you and dear old Dobbin, how well I knew the sound of his old feet. I can't give you the fever, Dobbin, can I? With this perhaps incorrect or at any rate unestablished hypothesis, she gave the old horse a lingering kiss just below his blinkers, in return for which he jerked off some froth on the sleeve of her dress and shook himself, while the carrier, having discharged his cargo, smote himself with both arms from habit rather than necessity, and approached his young sister for his usual hearty smack. No, Zach, no! she cried, running up the steps. I have no fear of taking it myself, whatever. But if I should happen to give it to you, I should never get over it. Well, well, little one, the Lord knows best. Mr. Cripps answered, without repining too bitterly at this arrangement. But aid in of my vettles lonesome is worse than having no salt to him. You better come home pretty soon, my dear, or somehow or other there might happen to be someone over in the corner, alongside of our best frying-pan. Eddie had heard this threat so often that now she only laughed at it. But instead of laughing, she blushed most sadly at her brother's parting words. God bless you, Eddie, for a brave good girl, and speed you home to Beckley. You want more sleep of nights, my dear. Your cheeks are getting like a pillowcase. But excuse my mentioning of one thing, Eddie, I'd be like a father to eat. Don't ye have more than you can help to say to the great scholar Master Harden now. Cripps was a gentleman in an inner kind of way, and he took good care to be getting up his shaft, with his stiff knees stiffer than ever from the long frost of last winter, while he discharged his duty, as he thought it, at as well as to his sister. Then he deposited the polished part of his breeches on the driving-board, and brought his game-leg into the right stick-out, and with his usual deliberation started, nay that is too strong a word, persuaded into progress his congenial and deliberate horse, either of them hurried on a washing-day any more than they hurried upon any other day. Zachary knew that his sister was, as Master Phil Hiss had said of her, the most terrible hand at blushing, and she could not bear to be looked at in this electric aura of maidenhood, and therefore she managed to be a long way off ere even he turned both head and hand to deliver last issue of God bless you. Full confusion about herself, and cleanness of duty for other people, Esther Cripps ran in, to see the many things now depending upon her. There were now three servants in the house gathered from good staff around, but wholly void of any wit to make up for want of experience. Esther had no experience either, but she possessed a good store of sense and quickness and kind energy. Whatever she thought of her brother's warning she would think of afterwards. For the present she must do her best concerning other people, and Mrs. Overshoot needed now more nursing than her son did. Zachary Cripps at the very first distance at which he was sure of not being seen began to shake his head and shook it in a resolutely reflective way, for nearly three-quarters of a mile. The trees above him were alive with beauty, alike of sight and sound and scent, and the carrier made up his mind for a pipe to enable him to consider things. His custom was not to smoke, except when good occasion offered, and he tried to have no contempt for carriers of inferior family, who could not deliver a side of bacon without smoking it over again almost. Zachary Cripps, like all good men, stood up for the dignity of his work. Strictly meditating thus he saw a slight figure approaching with a rapid swing and presently met, Mr. Hardenow. The fellow and tutor of Brazenow's, at the sight of Cripps and the well-known cart, stopped short to ask how things were going on at the house on the hill above them. The carrier answered that it would be many a long day, he was afraid, ere his worship could get about again, and that he ought to be kept very quiet, and those would be his best friends now who had the least to say to him. Also he was told that the poor old lady would find it as much as her life was worth, if she was interrupted or terrified now. But my good Cripps! answered Hardenow, I am not going either to interrupt or terrify them, all I desire is to have a little talk with your good and intelligent sister. Or Zachary felt that his own tactics thus were turned against him, and after a little stammering and heightened glow of countenance he betook himself to his more usual course, that of plain out-speaking. But first he got down from his driving-board, that he might not fail in due respect to a gentleman, and clergyman. Master Cripps had no liking at all for the duty which he felt bound to take in hand. He would rather have a row of three-turned-pike men than presumed to speak to a gentleman, therefore his bow-legs seemed to twitch him at the knee. As he led Hardenow aside into a quiet gateway. But his eyes were firm in his manner-grave and steadfast as he began to speak. Mr. Hardenow, I must ask your pardon, but for a few words as I want to say. You are a gentleman, of course, and a very learned scholar, and I be nothing but a common carrier. A carrier for hire, they calls me in the law when they comes upon me for damages. Also, however, I has to do my part off the road as well as on it, sir, and my duty to them of my own household comes next to my duty to God and myself. You are a good man, I know, and a kind one, and would not be known to yourself harm any one. It would go to your heart, I believe, Mr. Hardenow, from what I see of you, when you is quite a lad, if anyhow you is to be art or part in bringing unhappiness of mine to any that had trusted you. I should hope so, Cripps. I have some idea what you mean, but can hardly think, at any rate, speak more plainly. Well, then, sir, I mean all about your goings-on with our little eddy, or, at any rate, her goings-on with you, which cometh to the same thing in the end, so far as I be acquaint of it. You might think, if you is not told distinctly to the contrary, that have a no business to lift up her eyes, she never would do according. But I do assure you, sir, when it cometh to such like manner of taking on, the last thing as ever gets called into the account is sensible reason. They feels this, and they feels that, and then they falls into a dreamin', and the world goes into their tubs, same as butter, and they scoops it out in pats, and stamps it to their own size and liking, and then the whole melted, and a sour fool is left. Sir Crips, what you say is wise, and the like is often happened, but your sister is a most noble girl. You do her gross injustice by talking as if she were nothing but a common village maid. She is brave, she is pure, she is grandly unselfish. Her mind is well above feminine average. Anything more or so goes always amiss. You should not have such a low opinion as you seem to have of your sister, Crips. Sir, my opinion is high enough. Now you bring your own fine words to the test. Would you ever dream of marrying the maid if I and she both was agreeable? It would be an honour to me to do so. For the prejudices of the world I care not one fig. But surely you know that we contend for the celibacy of the clergy. Maiden is a parson, mutton, marry a wife? Ask Crips by the light of nature. Yes, my friend, that is what we now maintain in the Anglican communion as the tradition of the church. Well, may I be danged? cried Crips, who is an ardent theologian. And if I may make so bold to ask, sir, how could there have been a tribe of Levi? They must all have died out in the first generation, if them ever come to any generation at all. Your objection is ingenious, Crips, but the analogy fails entirely. We are guided in such matters by unbroken and unquestionable tradition of the early church. Then, sir, if you go outside the Bible, you stand on your own legs and leave us no kind of leg to stand upon. However, I believe that you mean well, sir, and I am sure that you never do no great harm. And as to already, if you feel like that in an honest, hopeless sort of way, I beg the honour of shaking hands, sir, for the spirit that is inside you. Certainly, certainly, Crips, with great pleasure, and have asked in you to trap another road for your own sake, as well as hers, sir, and may the Lord teach you to know your own mind. Crips, I will follow your advice for the present, though you have said some things that you scarcely ought to say. And I humbly beg your pardon, sir. One of us do it that same sometimes, the bridle of the tongue falleth into the teeth, and the lash is laid on us. Your metaphors are quite classical, however I respect you greatly, Crips, for your straightforward conduct. I am not a weak man any more than you are, although you seem to think me one. I like and admire your sister Esther for courage combined with gentleness. I always liked her when she was a child. And I understood her nature, but as to her liking me more than she ought, Crips, you are imaginative. Never here before, cried Crips, any accusation of that kind. My friend, it is the rarest compliment. However, your horse is quite ready to walk off, and so am I towards Cowley. I will not go to shot over Grange today, and I will avoid your sister, though I rarely do like talking to her. You are a man, sir," cried Zachary Crips, as hard now set off across the fields. God bless your reverence, though you never get a wife. A true man he is, and mightn't have been a fine one if he hadn't taken to them stiff coattails. CHAPTER XXXIII. In the meanwhile Mrs. Luke Sharp was growing very anxious about her son and only child and idol, Christopher. Not that there was anything at all amiss with his bodily health, so far at least as she could see, but that he seemed so unsettled in his mind, so absent and preoccupied, and careless even of his outdoor sports, which at one time were his only care. Of course, at this time of year there was very little employment for the gun, but there was plenty of fishing to be got, such as it was round Oxford, and it must be a very bad time of year when there are no rats for little terriers and badgers for the larger tribe, yet none of these things now possess the proper charm for Christopher. Wherever he was he always seemed to be wanting to be somewhere else, and, like a hydrophobic dog, he hated to be looked at, while, after the manner of a cat assisted lately by Lucina, he ran up into his own loft when he thought there was nobody watching. Well arranged as all this might be in keen and self-satisfactory there was something keener and not very easy to satisfy looking after it. The love of a mother may fairly be trusted to outwit any such calf love, as was making a fool of this unfledged fellow, fresh from the feather bed of a private school. Considering once he came and how he had been brought up and pampered, Kit Sharp was a very fine young fellow, and, thanks to his liking for gun and rod, he could scarcely be called a milk-sup. Still he was only a boy in mind and in manner quite unformed and shy, his father, for reasons of his own, having always refused to enter him at any of the colleges. He might perhaps have shaped his raw material by the noblest models if he had been admitted into the society of undergraduates, but the members of the university entertained in those days, and probably still entertained, adjust an inevitable contempt for all the non-togatti. Kit Sharp had made some fluttering overtures of the flag of friendship towards one or two random undergraduates, who had a nice taste for ratting, even dined and wind, once or twice, in a nod ignoble college, and had been acknowledged to know a mere sham as well as if he owned a statute-book. But the boy always fancied, perhaps through foolish and shy pride on his part, that these most hospitable and kind young men had their jokes to themselves about him. Perhaps it was so, but in pure good will, take him for all and all and allow for the needs of this situation, which towards the third year grow imperative, and the Oxford undergraduate is as good as any other young gentleman. A Kit Sharp, being exceedingly proud and most secretive of his pride, would not long receive without return good hospitality, and this alone, without other suspicions, would have set bounds to his dealing with a race profusely hospitable. His dear and good mother would gladly have invited a cross-duck house full of undergraduates, and left them to get on as they might, if only thereby her pet son might have sense of salt for salt with them. But Mr. Luke Sharp took a different view. To his mind, the junior members of the glorious university were a most disagreeable and unprofitable lot to deal with. He never, of course, condescended to the Vice Chancellor's Court, and he despised all little actions in that large world's legal sense. He liked a fine old Don, or head of a house, who had saved a sack of money, or well earned it by vitality. But for any such young fellows with no expectations, or Paolo post Futura such, Mr. Sharp was now too long established to put a leaf into his dinner table, this being so, and Christopher also of restricted pocket money, so that no dinners at the star or mitre could be contemplated. Master Kit Sharp, in a town and gown row, must have lent the weight of his quiet, but very considerable fist, to the opid infaction. Kit, now my darling Kit, do tell me, said Mrs. Sharp for about the fiftieth time as she sat her son in the sweet spring twilight at the large western window of cross-duck house. What is it that makes you sigh so? You almost break your poor mother's heart. I never did know you to sigh, my own one. Now, is it for a want of a rat, my darling? If rats are a sovereign apiece, you shall have one. Rats, mother! Why, I can catch my own without any appeal to the filthy. Rats are never far away from legal promises like these. You should not speak so of your father's house, Kit. And I am sure that no rats ever come upstairs, or out of the window, I must jump. But now you are only avoiding the subject. What is it that disturbs your mind, Kit? Once more, mother, I have the greatest objection to being called Kit. It sounds so small and so horribly prosaic. All the dictionaries say that it means either the outfit of a common soldier or else a diminutive kind of fiddle. Christopher, I really beg your pardon. I know how much loftier you are, of course, but I cannot get over the habit, Kit. Well, well then, my darling, I hope you are not at all above being my darling, Kit. Mother, you may call me what you like. It can make no difference in my destinies. Christopher, you make my blood run cold. My darling, I implore you not to sigh so. Your dear father pays my allowance on Monday. I know what has long been the aspiration of your heart. Kit, you shall have a live badger of your own. I hate the very name of rats and badgers. Everything is so low and nasty. How can you look at that noble sunset and be full of badgers? Mother, it grieves me to leave you alone, but how can I help it? When you go on, so? I shall go for a walk on the Botley Road. Take your pipe, Kit. Take your pipe. Whatever you do, Kit, take your pipe. Screamed poor Mrs. Sharp as she stuck his hat on, as if it were never to come off again. Oh, Kit, there are such deep black holes. I will fill your pipe for you. If you only smoke, Mother, you never know how to do it. And once more my name is Christopher. Young man threw a light cloak on his shoulder and set his eyebrows sternly, and his countenance looked very picturesque in the glow of his death's head mirsham. It occurred to his mother that she had never seen anything more noble. As soon as she heard him bang the door, Mrs. Sharp ran back to the window, when she could watch all across Duck Lane, and she saw him striding along towards the quickest outlet to the country. How wonderful it is, she said to herself with tears already. Only the other day he was quite the little boy, and whipped the top, and cried if a pin ran into him. And now he is, far beyond all, dispute the finest young man in Oxford. He has the highest contempt for all vulgar sports, and he bolts the door of his bedroom. His father calls him thick and soft. He cannot understand his qualities. There is the deepest and purest wellspring of unintelligible poetry in Kit. His great mind is perturbed, and has hurried him to commune with the evening star. Thank goodness that he has got his pipe. Before Mrs. Sharp had turned one page of her truly voluminous thoughts about her son, a sharp click awoke the front door lock, and a steady and well-jointed step made creaks in the old oak staircase. Mrs. Sharp drew back from her meditative vigil, and trimmed her little curls aright. Miranda, I have some work to do tonight, said Mr. Sharp in his quiet, even voice. And I thought it better to come up and tell you so that you need not expect me again. Just have the fire in the office lighted. I can work better there than I can upstairs, and I find the evening damp, although the long cold winter is gone at last. If I should ring about ten o'clock, it will be for a cup of coffee. If I do not ring then, send everybody to bed, and do not expect me until you see me. Certainly, Luke, I quite understand, answered Mrs. Sharp having been for years accustomed to such arrangements. But, my dear, before you begin, can you spare me five minutes for a little conversation? Of course I can, Miranda. I am always at your service. Mrs. Sharp thought to herself that this was a slight exaggeration, still on the whole she had little to complain of. Mr. Sharp always remembered the time when he cast sad distant eyes at her. Miranda Piper, more enchanting than a wheel-case, more highly cherished than the deed-box of an Earl. Nothing but impudence had enabled him to marry her, thereby his impudence was exhausted in that one direction, and he ever remained polite to her. Then, Luke, will you just take your favorite chair and answer me only one question? As she said these words, Mrs. Sharp took care to set the chair so that she could get the last gleam of sunset on her dear Lord's face. Her husband thoroughly understood all this and accepted the situation. Now, do tell me, Luke, you notice everything, though you do not always speak of it. Have you observed how very strangely Kit has been going on for some time now, and have you any idea of the reason, and do you think that we ought to allow it, my dear? Yes, Mrs. Sharp, I have observed it. You may not be at all uneasy about it. I am observing him very closely. When I disapprove, I shall stop it at once. But surely, my dear, surely I, his mother, am not to be kept in the dark about it? I know that you always take your own course, and your course is quite sure to be the right one. But surely, my dear, when something important is evidently going on about my own child, you would never have the heart to keep it from me? I could not endure it. Indeed, I could not. I should fret myself away to skin and bone. It would take a long time to do that, my dear, replied Mr. Sharp as he looked with satisfaction at her fine plump figure. It pleased him to hear, as he often did, that there was not in Oxford a finer couple of middle-aged people than Mr. and Mrs. Sharp. However, I should be exceedingly grieved ever to initiate such a process. But first, before I tell you anything at all, I will ask you to promise two things most clearly. My dear, I would promise fifty things rather than put up with this cruel anxiety. Yes, I daresay, but I do not want rash promises, Miranda. You must pledge yourself to two things, and keep your pledges. I will do so in a moment, with the greatest pleasure. You would never ask anything wrong, I am sure. Only, do not keep me waiting so. In the first place, then, you must promise me whether my plan turns out well or ill on no account to blame me for it, but to give me the credit of having acted for the best throughout. Nothing can be easier than to promise that, my dear. You always do act for the best, and what is more, the best always comes of it. Very well. You promise that. Also, you must pledge yourself to conceal from everyone, and most of all, from Christopher, anything I am about to tell you and to act under my directions. To be sure, my dear, to be sure I will. Nothing is more reasonable than that I should keep your secrets. I know you will try, Miranda, and I know that you have much self-command. Also, you will see the importance of acting as I direct you. All I fear is that when you see Borket moping, or sighing, or groaning, it may be almost beyond your power to refrain your motherly heart. Have no fear, Luke, have no fear, whatever. When I know that it is for his true interest, as of course it will be, I shall be exceedingly sorry for him, but still he may go on as much as he pleases, and of course he has not behaved well at all in being so mysterious to his own mother. Luke Sharp looked at his wife, to ask whether any offshoot of this reproach was intended at all to come home to him. If he had discovered any sign of that, the wife of his bosom would have waited long without getting another word from him, for seldom as Mr. Sharp showed temper he held back, with the chain curb of expedience. As quick as a temper is ever threatened to bolt with any man's fair repute. But now he received no irritation. His wife looked back at him kindly and sweetly, with moist, expressive eyes, and he saw that she still was in her duty. Miranda? He said, being touched by this, for he had a great deal of conscience. My darling, I will tell you something such as you never heard before. I have made a bold stroke of every bold one, and I think that it must succeed. And justice is with me, as you will own after all the attempts to rob us. Perhaps you never heard a stranger's story, but still I'm sure you will agree with me that in every step I have taken I am most completely and perfectly justified.