 41. Reason and unreason. When things were in this very ticklish condition almost everywhere and even Cripps himself could scarcely sleep because of rumors, and Dobbin, in his own clean stable, found the flies too many for him. An exceedingly active man set out to scour the whole of the neighborhood, to the large, invigorous mind of the Reverend Thomas Hardinow, the worst of all sins, because the most tempting and universal, was indolence. Hardinow never condemned a poor man for having his pint or his quor to veil, with his better half to help him, when he had earned it by a hard day's work, and he had fed his children likewise. Hardinow thought it not easy to find any hypocrisy more bald, or any morality more cheap, than that or those which strut about, reviling the poor man for taking, in the cheaper liquid form, the nourishment which his betters can afford to have in the shape of meat, and then are not content with it, unless it is curdled with some duly sour vintage. In passing such crucial points of debate, Hardinow always could make allowance for any sins rather than those which spring from a treacherous, sneaking, and lying essence. Now a council was held at the Grange of Shotover on the Monday, a sad and melancholy house it was, with its fine old mistress lately buried, and its poor young master only half recovered. The young tutor had been especially invited, and having heard everything from the squire, who was proud of having ridden so far, yet broke down ridiculously among his boasts, and from Russell Overshoot, who had thrown himself back for at least three days by excitement and exertion yesterday, and also from Mrs. Firmitage, who had lately been feeling herself overlooked. Hardinow thought for some little time before he would give his opinion, not that he was, by any manner of means, possessed with the greatness of his own ideas, but that Mrs. Firmitage, from a low, velvet chair, looked up at him with such emphatic inquiry and implicit faith that he was quite in a difficulty how to speak, or what to say, and so he said a very few short words of sympathy and of kindness, and gladly offered to do his best and obey the orders given him, so far at least as his duty to his college and pupils permitted. He confessed that he had thought of this matter many times before he was invited to do so, and without the knowledge which he now possessed, or the special interest in the subject which he now must feel for the sake of Russell, but Mrs. Firmitage, filled with respect for the wisdom of a fellow and tutor of a college, would not let Hardinow thus escape, and being compelled to give his opinion he did so with his usual clearness. I am not at all a man of the world, he said, and of the law I know nothing. My friend Russell is the man of the world, and knows a good deal of the law as well. A word from him is worth many of mine, but if Mrs. Firmitage insists upon having my crude ideas, they are these. First of the first, and by far the most important, I believe that Miss Oglander is alive, and that her father will receive her safe and sound, though not perhaps still Miss Oglander. God bless you, my dear sir," the squire broke in getting up to lay hold of the young man's hand. I don't care a straw for what her name may be. Snooks, or snobs, or Higginbotham. If I only get sight of my darling child again," Russell overshoot looked rather queer at this, and so to Mrs. Firmitage. But the squire continued in the same sort of way. What odds about her name if it only is my grace? Exactly so, replied Hardenow, that natural feeling of yours perhaps has been foreseen, and counted on, and that may be why such trouble was taken to terrify you with the idea of her death. Also, of course, that would paralyze your search, while the villains are at leisure to complete their work. I declare, I never thought of that," cried Russell. How extremely thick-headed of me! That theory accounts for a number of things that cannot be otherwise explained. What a head you've got, my dear Tom, to be sure! I wish I could believe it," Mr. Oglander exclaimed, whilst his sister clasped her fair-fat hands and looked with amazement at every one. But I see no motive, no motive, whatever. My grace was a dear good girl, as everybody knows, and a fortune in herself, but of worldly good she had very little, any more than I have, and her prospects were naturally contingent, contingent upon many things, which may not come to pass, I hope, for many years. If they ever do, here looked his sister, and she said, I hope so. Therefore, continued Mr. Oglander, while there are so many fine girls in the country very much better worth carrying off so far as mere worthless pelf is concerned, why should anybody steal my grace unless they stole her for her own sake? Here the squire sat down, and took the drumming with his stick. His feelings were hurt at the idea, though it was so entirely of his own origination, that his daughter had been carried off for the sake of her money, not of her own dear self, hard now looked at him and made no answer. He felt that it did not behoove a mere stranger to ask about a young lady's expectations, while overshoot was more imperatively silenced by his relations towards the family. But Mrs. Firmitage came to the rescue, grayed with her faith in the value of money, and she liked to have it known that she had plenty. Toot, toot! she cried, shaking out her new brocaded silk, a morning dress certainly, what softly trimmed with purple. Why should we make any mystery of things when the truth is most important, and the truth is, Mr. Hardin Now, that my dear niece had very good expectations. My deeply lamented husband respected, and I may say, reverenced, for upwards of half a century in every college of Oxford, and even more so by the corporation, for the pure integrity of his character, the loftiness of his principles, and the substance of his what they make the wine of. He was not the man, Mr. Hardin Now, to leave a devoted wife behind him, who had stepped perhaps out of her rank a little, not being of commercial birth, you know, but never found cause to regret it, without some provision for the earthly time which she, being many years his junior, come, come, Joan, not so very many, exclaimed the truthful squire, about five or six at the utmost, you were born on the twenty-fifth of June, A.D., Worth, I was not asking you for statistics. Mr. Hardin Now, you will excuse my brother. He has always had a rude style of interruption. He learned it, I believe, in the army, and we always made allowance for it, but to go back to what I was saying, my good and ever to be lamented husband, being, let us say, ten years my senior, Worth, will that content you? Left every farthing of his property to me, and a good husband always does the same thing, I am told, and I believe they are ordered in the Bible, and of course I have no one to leave it to but grace, and being so extraordinarily advanced in years as my dear brother has impressed upon you, they could not have any very long time to wait, and my desire is to do my duty, and perhaps that lies at the bottom of it all. After relieving her mind in this succinct yet copious manner, the good lady went into her chair again, carefully directing, in whatever state of mind, the gathering and the falling of her dress aright, and though it might be fancy that her color had been high, anybody now could see that her dignity had conquered it. Now the whole of this goes for next to nothing, said the squire, while the young men looked at one another, and longed to be out of the way of it. As we have got into the subject, let us go right down to the bottom of it. What are filthy pence and half-pence or a cellar, like ballacks, of silver and gold, when compared with the life of one pure dear soul? I may not express myself theologically, but you can see what I mean exactly. I mean that I would kick out old port wines dross to the bottom of the red sea, where Pharaoh lies, if it turns out that that has killed my child, or made her this long-time dead to me. Having justified his feelings thus, the old man stood up and went to the window, to look for his horse. The very last thing he desired always was to let out what he felt too much. But to hear that old thief of a port wine-fermitage praise, and his looker put forward, quite as if it were an equivalent for grace, and to think that he owed to that filthy cause the loss of the liveliest, loveliest darling, without whom he had neither life nor love, such things were enough to break the balance of his patience, and the rest might think them out amongst them. Now this might have made a very serious to-do between Mr. O'Glander and his sister Joan, both of them being of the stiff-necked order, if he had been allowed to ride away like this. Mrs. Fermitage had her great carriage in the yard, and two black horses with wide valleys down their backs, rattling rings of the brightest brass, while they stood in the stable with a bale between them, and gently deigned to blow the chaff off from the oats of Shotover. This goodly pair made a great rush now into the mind of their mistress, the only sort of rush they ever made, and seeing her brother in that state of mind to get away from her, she became inspired with an equal desire to get away from him. "'Will you kindly ring the bell?' she said, and order my horses to be put to. I think I have quite said every word I had to say, and being the only lady present, of course, I labour under some, well, some little disadvantages. Not, of course, that I mean for a moment. To be sure not, Joan, you never do know what you mean. You would be a very nasty woman if you did. Now, do let us turn our minds to the pleasant way of everything. If any word has come from me to lead to strong kind of argument, I beg pardon of everybody, and then there ought to be an end of it.' Mrs. Fermitage scarcely knew what to say, but in a relenting way looked round for someone to take it up for her. And she was not long without somebody. "'Mr. Oglander,' said Russell Overshoot, "'you really ought to give us time to think. You are growing so hasty, sir, since you came back to your seat in the saddle, and your cross-country ways that you want to ride over every one of us, ladies and gentlemen all alike.' The old squire laughed. He could not help it. At the thought of his own effrontery he felt that there might be some truth about it, ever since it had come into his mind that he might not, after all, be childless. He would not have any one know for a thousands pounds why he was laughing, or that half another word might turn it into weeping. He had seen it proved in learned books that no man knew the way to weep at his time of life, and if his own case went against it, he had the manners to be ashamed of it. So he waited till he felt that his face was right, and then he went up to his sister Joan, who was growing uneasy about her own words, and he took her two plump hands and his, and gave a glance, for all their present to be welcome witnesses, and then, having knowledge for the last ten years how much too fat she was to lift, he managed to kiss her in the two right places, disarranging nothing. His sister looked up at him, as soon as he had done it with a sense of his propriety and study of her harmonies, and she whispered to him quietly, I beg you pardon, brother, and he spoke up for all to hear him. Joan, my dear, I beg your pardon. No, the first thing to be done, said Hardinow, is to find Sinementa and her husband Smith, but allow me to make one important request, that even your advisor, Mr. Luke Sharp, shall not be informed of what has passed to-day, or that overshoot found out yesterday. With some little surprise they agreed to this. And of Chapter 41 There happened, however, to be someone else whose opinion differed very wildly from that of Mr. Hardinow, as to the necessity for any prompt appearance of either Mr. or Mrs. Joseph Smith. The old red house in Cross-Duck Lane was ready to jump out of its windows, if such a feat be possible, with eagerness and anxiety at the long absence of its master. Mr. Luke Sharp had not crossed his own threshold for ten whole days, including two Sundays, when even an attorney may give leg bail to the power under whose Ka-Ad-Sa he lives. The business of the noble firm of Piper, Pepper, Sharp and Company, was falling sadly into arrears, at the very busiest time of year, for Mr. Sharp had always kept his very best clerks in leading strings, and Kit thus far, with his mother's aid, had battled against all articles. Christopher Firmated Sharp, Esquire, was resolved to be a country gentleman and a sportsman, and no quill driver. He felt that his arms and legs as well were a great deal too good for going on and under a desk, with fine resignation Kit accepted the absence of his father. With his father away he was a very great man. With his father at home he was quite a small boy. He liked to play master of a house, and frightened his mother in the maids, and vowed to dine at the mitre, all the rest of the week, if that was their style of cookery, but poor Mrs. Sharp could not treat the matter thus. Truly delighted as she was to see her boy take his father's place, and conduct himself with dignity as the head of the household, and find fault with things of which he knew nothing, and order this, that, and the other way, still she could not help remembering that all this was not as it ought to be. Christopher ought to have been in tortures of intense anxiety, and, so far as that went, so ought she, and she really tried very hard not to sleep, and to sit up listening for the night-bell. But a man who thinks everything of his own will, and nothing of any other person's wish, may be pretty sure that none will miss his presence so much as himself does, in spite of all that Mrs. Sharp was anxious, and so were the rest of the household, though rather perhaps with care than love, at the long, unaccountable absence of the head and the brain of everything. Even the boys in Cross-Duck Lane who had a strong idea that lawyer Sharp would defend them against the magistrates, were beginning to feel that they must look out before throwing stones at any other boys. You are not at all the thing, my darling boy? submisses Sharp to Christopher on the evening of that same Monday on which the council had been held shot over. Your want of appetite makes me wretched. Now put on your cloak, my pet, and go as far as Carfax or Magdalene Bridge. The two evening coaches will soon be in, the Defiance and the Regulator. I have a strong idea that your father will come by one or other of them. I may just as well go there as anywhere else, the young man answered gloomily. For some days now he had striven in vain for an interview with his charmer. And the most unkindest cut of all, he had spied her once, and she had run away. It does not matter where I go. When you talk like that, dear child, you have no idea what you do. You simply break the heart of your poor mother, and much you care for that. Now, if you should see any very fresh calves, sweet breads, or even a pigs fry, or anything you fancy, order it in, dear, at once, and be sure that you are home by nine o'clock, and bring your dear papa with you, if you can. Get with a sigh and a roll of his eyes flung his cloak around him. And with long, slow, melancholy strides, clom the arduous steep of Carfax. If any faith there be to brew to veterans, eighty well-equipped quadragy daily past with prance of steeds and sound of classic trump and often youthful charioteer, more apt to handle than wind ribbons. Forty chariots came from smoke and wealth and din of blessed Rome, and other forties sped them back with the glory and mud of the country divine. The moody kid ensconced himself away from the tramp and the vulgar crowd in the beatling doorway of a tailor who had put his shutters up, and thrice being challenged by proctors velvet-sleeved and velvet-salvaged pro. Sir, are you a member of this university? Thrice had the pleasure of answering, no. Once and again he wiped his hectic cheek and fevered brow with a yellow bandana, from which the winner of last year's derby was washing out, and he saw the defiance in the regulator pass, newly horsed from rival inns exalting their horns against one another with slinter bars swinging behind cocked tails, all eager for their race upon Chaldenham Road. But he saw not the author of his existence, yet no tear bedewed his unfilial eye, though these were the likeliest coaches. All right, he said, putting his pipe in its case. Governor won't come home to-night. I am in no hurry if he isn't. I think I'll have sheep's-trotters. It's a beastly time of the year for anything. Twitching his cloak which had two long tassels he strode from his post of observation and morbid meditation towards a tidy and clean little tripe-shop, he knew the old woman who kept it, in George Street. She always put him into good condition by generous admiration. Alas, he had stridden but a very few strides when he met the up-coach from Woodstock, wearily with spent horses making rally for the star, the driver, a man of fine family at Christ Church, now in his seventh term, and fighting off his smalls with a turn of his strong arm pulled the team together while, with the other hand, he launched a scouring flourish of the shrill scourge over every blessed horse's ears. Well done, my lord! said a gentleman on the box as the four horses pulled up foot for foot and stood with their ears and their noses one for one. You have brought them up in noble style, my lord. I never saw it done more perfectly. My lord touched his white hat and said nothing. He had crowned his day as he always loved to crown it, and now, if he could get into a back room of the star, pull off his top boots and cape and on cap and gown and fetch back to college clear of five pounds fine, as happy as any lord would he be, till nature sent him forth to drive again to-morrow. But Kitt, having very keen ears, had recognized, even from the other side of the street, the sound of his dear father's voice, Mr. Luke Sharp never missed a chance of commending a nobleman's exploits, but he would not have spoken in so loud a tone perhaps if he had known that his son was near at hand, or he hated with a consistent hatred, whether he were doing well or ill, whole observation of his movements by any member of his household. Christopher, being well aware of this, pushed his own course in the shadow. For resolved with filial piety, he keep his good father in sight for fear of his falling into any mischief. First of all, Mr. Sharp, as observed at a respectful distance by his son, went into the coach office, and there left his handbag in his traveling coat. Then, carrying something rolled under his arm, he betook himself to a little quiet tap-room, and called for something that loomed and steamed afar, very much after the manner of hot brown grog. Oh-ho! muttered Kit. Then he isn't going home. My duty to the household commands me to learn why. With a smack of his lips, Mr. Sharp, the elder, came out into Corn Market Street again, and turning his back on his home, set forth at a rapid pace for the broad desert of St. Giles, ere he passed into an unlit alley, in the lonely parts beyond St. John's, and Kit, full of wonder, was about to follow, but hung back as the receding figure suddenly stopped and began to shift about. In a nice, dark place, the learned gentleman unrolled the traveling rug he had been carrying, undoubled it, after that from the same selvedge, and lo, there was a city watchman's large, loose overall. Then he pressed down the crown on his black spring hat till it lay on his head like a pancake, pulled the pouch of his long cloak over that, and emerged from the alley with a vigilant slouch, whistling Mole Maloney. Considerable surprise found its way into the candid mind of Christopher. Well now! thought the ungrateful youth as he shrank behind a tree to peep. I always knew that the Governor was a notch or two too deep for us, but what he is up to now surpasses all experience of him. What shall I do? It seems so nasty to go spying after him. And yet things are taking such a very strange turn that, for the sake of my mother, who is worth a thousand of him, I do believe I am bound to see what this strange go may lead to. Young curiosity sprang forth, and strongly backed up his sense of duty. In so much the kid, after hesitating and listening for any other step, stealthily followed the author of his existence across the dark and dusty road. He is going into Squeaker Smith's, thought the lad. He will get a horse, and ride away, no end. And of course I can never go after him. I am sure it has something to do with me. Such troubles are enough to drive one mad. But Mr. Sharp did not turn in at the lamp-lit entrance to those mows. He shunned the beaming oil which threw barred shadows upon saw-dust of a fine device, and keeping all his merits in the dark strode on, like a watchman newly ordered to his post. Then suddenly he turned down a narrow, unmade lane. He looked with clay, and leading, as Christopher knew quite well, to the wildest part of Jericho. I will follow him no further. Said Kit Sharp with a pang of astonishment and doubt. He is my father. What right have I to pry into his secrets? How I wish that I had not followed him at all. It serves me right for meanness. I will go home now. What care have I for anything? Trotters, cow-heel, or sweetbread, as he turned, to carry out his good resolve with a heart that would have ailed him more for leaving fears unfinished. The sound of a clouting, loudish footstep came along the broken mud-banks of the narrow lane. The place was lonely, dark, and villainous. Footpads still abounded. Kit knew that his father often carried large sums of money and always the great gold watch. He might have been decoyed here for robbery and murder, upon pretense of secret business. Clearly it was the young man's duty not to be too far away. Therefore he drew back, and stood in the jaws of the dark entrance. But while he was ready to leap forth if wanted the sound of quiet voices told him that there was no danger. Kit could not hear the first few words, but his father came back towards the mouth of the lane, as if he would much rather not go into the dark too deeply. Christopher therefore was obliged either to draw back into the hedge, and there lie hid without moving, or else to come forward and declare himself. He knew that the latter was his proper course, or he might have known it if he had taken time to think, but the dread of his father and the hurry of the moment drove him without thought into the lurking-place. It was quite dark now, and there was not a lamp within a furlong of them. You quite understand me, then. Mr. Sharp was speaking in a low clear voice. You are not to say a word to Cripps about it. He is true enough to me because he dare not be otherwise. But he is an errant coward. I want a man who has the spirit to defy the law, when he knows that he is well backed up. Governor, I am your man for that. I have defy the law since I was that high, with only my mother in the wickest to back me. What I mean is to defy the wrong fashions of the law, the petty rules that go against all common sense and equity. All the fashions of the law be wrong. I might have got in the world like a house of fire, if it hadn't been for that devil's own law. To tell me a thing is again the law is as good as an eister to my teeth. Go on, Governor, no fear of that, I say. And you know where to find, at any moment, the man as resolute as yourself, Joe Smith? Well, you know what you have to do in case of any sudden stir-a-rising. At present all goes well, but all, at any moment, may go wrong. Squire Overshoot is about again at last. Ah, if I could only come across a he of a dark night, such as this be. And that fool Sinementa has told him all she knows, which luckily is not very much. I took good care to keep women out of it. And that Carrier, too, has been smelling about. But he hasn't a sense of his own horse. Night and day, George, night and day, keep a look out and have the horses ready. You know what I have done for you, my man. Governor, if it hadn't been for you, I might have seeded the clouds through the altered loop. You speak the truth and express it well, and you may still enjoy that fair opportunity unless you attend to every word I say. No fear, Governor, I know you too well. A good friend and a bad enemy, you be. Thick and thin, sir, thick and thin. Again all the world, sir, I sticks by you. Enough for tonight, my man. Get ready and be off. I shall know where to find you as before. I shall ride over to-morrow if I find it needful. With these words Mr. Luke Sharpe set off at a good round pace for Oxford, while the other man shambled and whistled his way homewards up the black-mouthed lane. Perceiving these things Christopher Sharpe, with young bones leaped from his hiding place, astonishment might have been read upon his ingenious and fat countenance if the lighting committee of the corporation had carried out their duty. But having no house of their own out here, they had far back put colophon on the nascent gas-pipe. The ambition of the city at that time was to fill all the houses of the citizens and extend in no direction, but though his countenance for want of light only wasted its amazement, Kit, like Hector with his windpipe damaged, but not by any means perforated, gave issue to his sentiments. Unlike Hector, so far as we know, Kit had been forming a habit of using language too strong for ladies. Blow me! was his unheroic exclamation. Blow me, if ever yet, I knew so queer a start as this. Sure as eggs as eggs, that is the very blackard I drugged for his insolence, his voice is enough, and his snuffle, and I believe he was rubbing his nose in the dark. I'm sure he's a man. I could swear it's the man, though I could not see his filthy face at all, my father to be in a conspiracy with him, and poor Cinaminta, and Mr. Overshoot. What the dickens is the meaning of it all. The Governor has a thousand times my brains, as everybody says, and I am the last to grudge it to him, and he thinks he can do what he likes with me. I am not quite sure of that if he puts my pecker up too heavily. To throw his favorite light on his own reflections, Kit sharp lit his pipe, and followed slowly in his father's wake, wiser and wider and brighter men might be found betwixt every two lampposts, but few more simple, soft and gentle than this honest lawyer's son. Perfectly free from all suspicions and as happy as he deserved to be, Mr. Sharp leaned back in his easy chair after making an excellent supper, engaged with complacency at his good wife. He was really glad to be at home again, and to find his admiring household safe, and to rest for a while with a quiet brain, as the Lord and Master of everything. Christopher had been sent to bed, as if he were only ten years old, for instead of exhibiting the proper joy he had behaved in a very strange and absent manner, and his father who delighted much in snubbing him sometimes, had requested him to seek his pillow. Kit had accepted this proposal very gladly, longing as he did to think over by himself that strange adventure of the evening. Now, darling Luke, began Mrs. Sharp as soon as she made her husband quite snug, and provided him with a glass of negus. You really must be amazed at my unparalleled patience and self-control. You ran away suddenly at the very crisis of a most interesting and momentous tale, and from that day to this I have not had one word, and how to behave to Kit has been a riddle beyond riddles. How I have seen to the dinner, I am sure, and of sleep I have scarcely had fifty winks between my anxiety about you and misery at not knowing how the story ended. Very well, Miranda, I will tell you all the rest, together with the post-script added since I went to London. Only you must stay up very late, I fear, to get to the proper end of it. I will stay till the cocks crow. At least, I mean, dear, if after your long journey you are really fit for it. If not, I will wait till tomorrow, dear. Mr. Sharp was touched by his wife's consideration for him. He loved her more than he loved anyone else in the world, except himself, and though, like many other clear-headed men, he had small faith in brain's feminine, he was not quite certain that he might not get some useful idea out of them when the matter at issue was feminine. I am ready, if you are, my dear, he said, for he hated to beat about the bush. Only I must know where I left off, with all I have done since I quite forget. You left off just when you had discovered the real man who was called Jolly Fellows. The man Cousin Firmitage left his will with? To be sure, or at least, it was a codicell. Very well, I found him in the wine vaults of the company where they have been for generations. He was going round with some large and good customer, such as old Firmitage himself had been. Sinhor Galofelos had a link in one hand and, in the other, a deep dock glass, while a man in his shadow bore a flashing gimlet and a long-armed siphon tap. From cell to cell and pipe to pipe they were going in regular order, showing brands, ex this and ex that, and making little taps and trying them. I was admitted, without a word, as one of this solemn procession, being taken for a member of the sacred trade, and a number of sips of wine I got and the importance attached to my opinion would have made you laugh, Miranda. At length I got a chance of speaking alone to Sinhor Galofelos, a tall, dark, gentlemanly man, of grave and dignified manner. He at once remembered that he had received a paper from Mr. Firmitage. Of its nature, however, he knew nothing, not being acquainted with our legal forms. He had kept it ever since in a box at his house, and if I could call upon him after office hours he would show it to me with pleasure. Accordingly I took a hackney-coach to his house near Hampstead in the evening and found that old Portwine had not deceived me during our last interview. I held in my hand a most important codicelle to the old man's will, duly executed and attested so far at least as could be decided without inquiry. By this codicelle he provoked his will thus far, that instead of leaving the residue, after payment of legacies to his widow absolutely, he left her a life interest in that residue, after bequeathing the sum of twenty thousand pounds duty-free to his niece, Grace Oglander. Out of my money, Luke! cried Mrs. Sharp indignantly. Twenty thousand pounds out of my money! And what niece of his was she I should like to know? Was there nothing whatever for his own flesh and blood? Nothing whatever, answered Mr. Sharp calmly. But wait a bit, Miranda, wait. Well, all the residue of his estate, after the decease of his said wife, Joan, was by this codicelle absolutely given to his said niece, Grace. He said that they both would know why he had made the change, and then the rest of this will was confirmed as usual. I never heard such a thing! I never heard such robbery! exclaimed Mrs. Sharp with a panting breast. I hope you will contest it all, my dear. If there is law in the land, you cannot fail to upset such a vile, vile will! You can show that the fungus got into his brain. My dear, it is my object to establish that will, or the codicelle, rather, which I thus discovered. I am obliged to proceed very carefully, of course. A rash step would ruin everything, and luckily the executors remain as before, though he would not trust them with the codicelle. Well, one of them, as you know, bought such a lot of port, half price, at his testator's sale, that in three months he required an executor for himself. The other took warning, by his fate, and is going in for Claret and the sour renish wines. This has made him as surly as a bear, and he is a most difficult man to manage. But if any one can handle him, I can, and he has a deadly quarrel with that haughty Joan. I had first ascertained, without any stir, that the attestation is quite correct. Two stupid bottle men, who gave no thought to what they were doing, conswear to the signing, and the codicelle itself, though portwine drew it without any lawyer, is quite clear and good. At the proper moment I produce the codicelle account for my possession of it, go to Mr. Wiggington, and make him prove it, and then I think we turn the tables on the proud old widow. Oh, Luke, what a blessed day that would be for me, the things I have endured from that odious woman. Of course it will mortify her not to have disposal, and to have to give up twenty thousand pounds, the miser, the screw, the expositor hypocrite, the filthy silk stockings I should be a shame to own. But, darling Luke, I do not see how we ourselves are a bit the better off for it, for Grace being dead, of course, her father takes the money. Suppose, for a moment, that instead of being dead, Grace O'Glander is the wedded wife, by that time, of a certain Christopher Firmitage, sharp, and without any settlement. What? exclaimed Mrs. Sharp, jumping with astonishment. Is it possible? Is it possible? It is more than possible, it is probable, and without some very bad luck it is certain. Oh, you darling love! She very nearly shouted, giving him a hug with her plump white arms. Oh, Luke, it is the noblest thing I ever heard, and she is such a nice girl, too, so sweet and clever and superior, the very daughter I would have chosen out of fifty thousand, and with all that money at her back, I, we can retire her, and set up a green baroche. I shall have it lined with the new agate color, trimmed with deep use, like the marshiness of Marston's. That is, if you approve, of course, my dear, and a pair of iron grays always go the best with that. But, Luke, you will laugh at me for being in a hurry. There is plenty of time, dear, is there not? Though they do say that carriage-builders are so slow, but they think so much of their old family, my dear, I know how very wonderfully managing you are, and as clever as can be consistent with the highest principle, but do tell me how you have contrived all this so well, and never even let me guess a single whisper of it? It is required some tact and skill, Mr. Sharp replied, with a twinkle in his eyes, and taking a good pull that is Port Wine Negus, and even more than that, Miranda, without a bold stroke, it could never have been done. I staked almost everything upon the die. Not quite everything, for I made all arrangements if we should have to fly. Fly, my dear! cried Mrs. Sharp, looking up with a very different face. What do you mean, Luke, to have to run away? Quite so. There is no great stroke without great mess, and if I had messed, we must all have bolted suddenly. The Lord forbid, run away in disgrace from my father's own house, and the whole world that knows us, I never could have tried to go through such a trial. Yes, my dear Miranda, it might have come to that, and you would have gone through the whole of it without a single murmur. Luke, I positively tremble at you. The good woman answered, as her eyes fell under his. How stern you can look when you want to scare me! Miranda, I tell you the simple truth. We must all have been in France within twelve hours if—if—well, never mind. Nothing venture, nothing win. But happily we have won, I believe, though we must not be too sure as yet. We have justice on our side, but justice does not always prevail against petty facts, and public opinion would set against us with great ferocity, if we failed. If we succeed, all men will praise us as soon as we begin to spend our money, and exert it near home at the outset. Everything depends upon success, of course. It always does in everything. My dear, it is not fair of you to talk like that, Mrs. Sharp answered, with tears in her eyes, for in all her kind and un-girt nature there was no entry for cynicism. You must feel that I would hold by you always whatever all the world might have the impedance to say, dear. Beyond a doubt you would. You could do no otherwise, but that might be of very little use. I mean that it would be the very greatest prop in comfort and blessing and support in every way, and would keep one's faith to some extent in human nature and divine assistance, but still. If we had to live on three pound ten a week, however we will not anticipate the worst. You would like to know how the whole thing stands now? Mrs. Luke Sharp, although not very clever and wholly incapable of any plot herself, beyond such little stratagems as ladies do concoct for fetching down the price of rep or getting gloves at a quarter of their cost, nevertheless had her share of common sense, and that which generally goes there with, respect for the opinion of good people. She knew that her husband was a very bold man, as well as a very strong-willed one. He had often done things which she had thought too daring, and yet they had always turned out well, but what he had now in hand was, even according to his own account, the most brisky imperilous venture yet, and though, like the partner of a gambler, she warmed up to back his hand and cheer him, and let her heart go with him. In her wiser mind she had shivers and shutters and a chill shadow of the end of it. Mr. Sharp saw that his wife was timid, which of all things would be fatal now, for her aid was indispensable, otherwise perhaps he would not have been quite so ready to tell her everything. He had put things so that her dislikes and envies, as well as her likings and loves and ambitions, would compel her to work with him. If she were lukewarm his whole scheme must fail. At the mere idea his temper stirred, will you hear the rest? Or is your mind upset? He asked a little roughly. His wife looked uprightly from some little blink of thought. Every word of it now. I must hear every word, if you will be so kind, my dear. I will go and see that all the doors are shut. CHAPTER 44 THE MANNER You see now, Miranda, continued Mr. Sharp, as his wife came and sat quite close to him, that it was my duty to make the most of the knowledge thus providentially obtained. We had met with a bitter disappointment through the most gross injustice, brought about, no doubt, by craft and weedling and black falsehood, when old Firmitage stood Godfather to our only child and showed a sense of duty towards him by bottling and walling up a pipe of wine. Everybody looked upon Kidd as certain to stand in his shoes in the course of time. You know how we always looked forward to it, not covetously or improperly, but simply as a matter of justice, and you remember what he said to me before he went to church with Joan O'Glander. Quibbles, my boy, this shall make no difference between you and me, mind? I am sure that you meant it when he said it. But that artful woman so led him astray and laid down the law about wives and husbands and county families and all that, in boring contempt upon our profession, that all his better feelings left him and he made the will he did, and, but for her low, unwomanly cowardice during his last illness, so what would have stood, as she believes it even now, to stand? Oh, what a pure delight it will be, cried the lady, unable to help herself. Such a triumph of right over might and falsehood. Do let me be there to see it. There is time enough to think of that, Miranda. Well, as soon as ever I felt quite sure of my ground about the Coticelle, which, in her Galovalos, placed in my hands after making inquiry about me here, and being satisfied of my relationship and respectability, I began to cast about for the most effectual mode of working it. It was clear in a moment that the right course was to make a match between grace, now the legal heiress and kit, the legitimate heir. But here I was met by difficulties which, appeared at first sight insuperable, the pride of the old squire and his family nonsense and suit of rustle overshoot, and the girl's own liking for that young fellow, which I had some reason to suspect, the impossibility of getting at the girl and, last not least, the stupid shyness of our Christopher himself. These and other obstacles compelled me to knock them all out of the way, by some decisive action. The girl must be taken out of stupid people's power, and brought to know what was good for her. Of course, I might have cut the matter short by walking the girl off and allowing her no food until she consented to marry Kit. And probably if I could only have foreseen my sad anxieties and heavy outlay, I should have acted in that way, but I have a natural dislike to measures that wear an appearance of harshness, and I could not tell how Kit might take it, or even you, Miranda dear, in this sad puzzle some good inspiration brought to my mind Hannah Patch, and living by herself in London, in a sort of a manner she is my sister, as I have told you long ago, although she is so many years my elder. Mrs. Sharp knotted. She knew all about it and admired her husband nonetheless for being the illegitimate son of the fashionable Captain Patch. Very well, this admirable man resumed, you are aware that Hannah looked very coldly upon me, and spoke of me always as that child of sin, until I was unable to marry you, my dear, through your disinterested affection, which is my choicest treasure, having one that, and another more lucrative, but less delightful partnership, I became to sweet Hannah the child of love, and was immediately allowed the privilege of doing all her legal business gratis. You have often grumbled at that, but I had some knowledge of what it was about, my dear, and I soon obtained that due influence over her which all women ought to have some man to wield. Seeing aside her present use, Hannah Patch has two hundred pounds a year of her own, which might be much better invested, and shall be as soon as it comes to us, but it would not do to have her two set up herself. Oh, Luke, what a large-minded dear you are, whispered Mrs. Sharp with much enthusiasm. I do believe nothing escapes you and nothing that gets into your hand ever does get out again. While I'm pretty well for that, he answered looking at his large strong palm. I began with my hands pretty empty, God knows, and only my own brain to fill them, but perseverance, integrity, and readiness to oblige have brought me on. And above all things, Miranda, the grace that I found in your kind eyes. The kind and still pretty eyes looked prettier, and almost young, with the gleam of tears. While the owner of all this integrity proved that it had stood him in good stead, by drawing from his pocket and spreading on his hand a handkerchief, which had cost him yesterday fourteen and six pence, in Holburn, ready hemmed. Yes, he continued with a very honest smile. You see me as I am, my dear, and there are many poor people in the world worse off. Still it would never do for me to stop. One must be either backward or forward, always, and I prefer to be forward, and I hope to make a great step now, but there must be no hesitation. Well, to go on with my story, I saw how useful Ms. Patch might be to us. She has strong religious views which always make it so easy to guide anyone to the right, by giving the proper turn to things. Pugnacious dread of popery and valiant terror of the Jesuits are the leading strings of her poor old mind. I got firm hold of both of these, and being trustee of her money also, I found her quite ready to do good deeds. I allowed her to perceive that if things went on without our interference, Grace O'Glander would be married, and her enormous fortune sacrificed to a man whose bosom friend is a Jesuit, a fierce wolf in sheep's clothing, an uncommonly clever fellow, by the by, a very young tutor of Brazenos. She had heard of him for his name is well known among the leaders of this new sect, who call themselves Anglo Catholics, and will end by being Roman Catholics. Of these good men, according to their lights, Hannah Patch has even deeper terror than of downright Jesuits. Naturally such stuff matters not to me except when I can work it. Hannah Patch also had a special grudge against old Squire O'Glander, a man very well in his way, and very honest, who thinks a great deal of his own opinions, and is fit to be his own grandfather. He had no love at all for the Patch connection, the Patch on the family, as he called it, and the marriage of his stepmother with Captain Patch, and the Captain's patronizing heir towards him, in a word Miranda he hated them all. However, when Hannah was in trouble once or twice and without a roof to shelter her, before she got her present bit of cash, old O'Glander had her down, and was very good and tried to like her. He put his child under her care to learn theology, as she called it, and he paid her well for teaching her the Psalms and the other denunciations. They went away together to some very lonely place while the Squire was a week or two away from home, and now it occurred to me that this experience might be repeated and prolonged if needful. O'Glander had been nervous, as I knew, and as his daughter also knew, about some form of black fever or something, which had been killing some gypsy people, and was likely to come into the villages. I made use of this fact with Hannah Patch to help me, and quietly took my young heiress off to a snug little home in the thick of the woods, where I should be sorry to reside myself. She was under the holy wing of Miss Patch, and there she abides to this present day, and I feed them very well, I assure you. They cost me four pound ten a week, for the evangelical Hannah believes it to be the clearest mark of the beast to eat meat less than twice a day, and Leviticus Crips, who supplies all the vitals, is making a fortune out of me. No bigger rogue ever lived than that, fellow. He is under my thumb so entirely that if I told him to roll in the mud he would roll, and yet with all his awe of me he cannot forbear from cheating me. He has found out a manner of dipping his pork so that it turns into beef or mutton, according to the orders from the cottage, and he charges me butcher's price for it, and cartage for six miles and a half and a penny a pound for trimming off the flanks. My dear, so Mrs. Sharp, it is impossible. He never could deceive a woman so. However devoted her mind might be, the grain of the meat is quite different and the formation of the bones is not at all alike, and directly it began to roast. Well, never mind, Miranda. There they are, quite reconciled to the situation. Except that Hannah Patch is always hankering after the means of grace, and the young girl mooning about her sweet old parent and beloved Beckley. Sometimes there are very fine scenes between them, but upon the whole they get on well together and appreciate one another's virtues, and I heartily trust that the merits of our kit have made their impression on a sensitive young heart. They took to one another quite kindly in the romance of the situation when I brought their sweet innocence into contact by a very simple stratagem. The dear young creatures have believed themselves to be outwitting everybody, the very thing I labored for them both to do. All's well that ends well, don't you think, Miranda? I am so entirely lost. I mean, I am so unable to think it all out, without more time being given me, Mrs. Sharp answered, while she pressed her hand across her unwrinkled forehead, and into her generally consulted girl, that really, Luke, for a moment I can only admire your audacity, but think, dear, that in a matter of this kind, and especially feminine province, I may say, you might have done me the honor of consulting me. Miranda, it was not to be thought of. Your health and well-being are the dearest objects of my life. I will only ask, could you have borne the suspense and the worry and the anxiety of the last four months? Above all, the necessity for silence. Yes, Luke, I could have been very silent, but I cannot abide anxiety. You call me a dear fat soul sometimes, and your judgment is always correct, my dear. At the same time I have little views of my own, and sensible ways of regarding things. You would like to hear my opinion, Luke, and to answer me one or two questions? Certainly, Miranda, beyond all doubt. For what other purpose do I tell you all? Now, let me have a nap for five minutes, my dear, while you ponder this subject and arrange your questions. He threw his smart handkerchief over his head, stretched out his feet, and took a nice little dose. Among my relations, submissive-sharp, reclining for fear of asserting herself as soon as her lord looked up again, I have always been thought to possess a certain amount of stupid common sense. Nothing of depth or grand stratagems, I mean, but a way of being right nearly nine times out of ten, and I think that this feeling is coming over me just now. My dear, if it is so, do relieve yourself. Do not consider my ideas for a moment, but let me know what your own are. Luke, how do you love to ridicule me? Well, if my opinion is of no account, I can only ask questions, as you tell me. In the first place, how did you get the girl away? Most easily, under her father's orders. Anna can write the old gentleman's hand to any extent, and his style as well, for the glory of the lord she did so. And how did you bring her to do such shocking things? She must have had a strong idea that they were not honest. Far otherwise, she took an enthusiastic view of the matter from the very first. I made it quite clear to her how much there was at stake and the hardest job for a long time was to prevent her from being too zealous. She scorns to take anything for herself, unless it can be put religiously, and for a long time I was quite afraid that I could not get a metal band on her, but she found out before it was quite too late that the mission of the brotherly love abounders upon the west coast of Africa had all their missionaries eaten up, and required a round sum to replace them. I promised her five thousand pounds for that, when her own mission ends in glory. Then you are quite certain to have her tight. I might trust you for every precaution, Luke, but how have you managed to keep them so quiet, while the neighborhood was alive with it? And in what corner of the world have you got them? And who was the poor girl that really did die? One question at a time, if you please, Miranda, though they all hang pretty much upon one hook? I have kept them so quiet because they are in a corner of the world where no one goes, in a lonely cottage at the furthest extremity of the old Stowe Wood, where their nearest road is a timber track three quarters of a mile away. They are weighted on by a deaf old woman who believes them to be Americans, which accounts to her mind for any oddness. Their washing is done at home, and all their food is procured through Cripps the Swineherd, whose forest farm lies well away so that none of his children go to them. Cripps is indebted to me, and I hold a mortgage of every rod of his land, and a bill of sale of his furniture and stock. He dare not play traitor and claim to reward, or I should throw him into prison for forgery, upon a little transaction of some time back. Moreover, he has no motive, for I have promised him the same sum, and his bill of sale canceled, when the wedding is happily celebrated. Meanwhile, he is making fine pickings out of me, and he caters at a profit of cent per cent. There is nobody else who knows anything about it except a pair of gypsy fellows, too wide awake to come near the law for any amount of guineas. One of them is old Kershrew, a celebrated horse-stealer, whom I employed to drive the horse in the needful vehicle from London. He knew where to get his horses without any postmaster being the wiser, and his vehicle was a very tidy carriage, want by the gypsies for a dwelling-place and furbished up so that the chases of the age are not to be compared with it. The inquiries made at all livery-stables and posting-houses and so on. My order of overshoot and the good squire and some of them through my own agency have afforded me genial pleasure and some little share of profit. Really, my dear, so Mrs. Sharp, you were scarcely right in charging for them. You should have remembered that you knew all about it. That was exactly what I did, my dear, and I felt how expensive that knowledge was. As a little set-off against the pig-master's bills, I made heavy entries against the good squire. The fault is his own. You should not have driven me into costly proceedings by that lowest of all things of arrogance of birth. Well, the other gypsy man is no other than Joe Smith, who jumped the broomstick with the lovely princess in a minta. You must have heard of her, Miranda. Half of the ladies in Oxford were most bitterly jealous of her some years back. I am sure then that I never was, Mr. Sharp. A poor creature sitting under sacks and doing juggling. None of the kind you never saw her. She is a woman of superior mind and most refined appearance. Indeed, her eyes are such as never— Oh, that is where you have been, Luke, is it, while we have been here for a fortnight trembling? Nonsense, Miranda, don't be so absurd. The poor thing has just lost her only child, and I believe she will go mad with it. It was her pretty sister, young Kibira, who died of collapse, and was buried the same night. This case was most extraordinary. The fever struck her without any illness, just as the plague and the cholera have done, with a headlong concentrated leap, as a thunderstorm gathers itself sometimes into one blue ball of lightning. And she was laughing at ten o'clock, and her poor young jaw tied up at noon, in a great panic burst among them. Luke, exclaimed Mrs. Sharp strongly shuddering, you never mean to say that you came home to me, from being among such people, without a change of clothes or anything? How could I come home without anything, my dear, but I was not among them at all that day, nor at any other period. I never go to work in that coarse sort of way. Familiarity begs contempt. However, I was soon informed of this most sad occurrence, and for a while it quite upset me, coming as it did at such a very busy time. However, when I had time to dwell more calmly on the subject, I began to see a chance of turning this keen blow to my benefit. The Gypsy camp was broken up with fatalistic terror, the most abject of all terrors, as the courage of the fatalist is the fiercest of all courage. They carried off their royal stock, the heiress of the Gypsy throne, as soon as some fine thief is hanged. Quite as the bees are said to carry off their queen when a hornet comes, poor Sinementa was caught away just when I might have made her useful, and only two men were left to attend to the burial of her sister. Of these, my friend Joseph Smith was one, as he ought to be, being Sinementa's spouse. It was a very active time for me, I assure you, Miranda, dear, the complication was almost too much to be settled in so short a time, and some of my hair which had been quite strong was lying quite flat in the morning. Perhaps you remember telling me. Yes, that I do, Luke, I could not make it out. Your hair had always stood so well in a far better color than the young men have got, and you told me that it was gone like that from taking cockles and tibilius pills. Miranda, I have never deceived you. I did take a couple, and they helped me on, but without attributing too much to them, I did make a lucky turn of it. Their manner of subculture is brief and wise, or at any rate, that of this tribe is, though they differ, I believe, very widely. These wait till they are sure that the sun has set, and then they begin to excavate. I was able to suggest that, in this great hurry and scattering of the tribes of Israel, the wisest plan would be to adopt and adapt a very quiet corner, already hollowed, and indicated by name, which is so much more abiding than substance, as a legendary gypsy akaldama. The idea was caught at, as it well deserved to be, in the panic and lack of time and terror of the poor dead body. The poor thing was buried there with very hasty movements, her sister and the rest being hurried away, and it is quite remarkable how this, the merest episode, as by the turn of events, assumed a primary importance. Four side and insight, and second side almost, would be attributed to me by anyone who did not know the facts. Scarcely anybody would believe, as this thing worked in my favor so much, that I can scarcely claim the invention any more than I can take any credit for the weather. Indeed, I may say, without the smallest presumption or profanity, that something higher than me or fortune has favored my plans from the very first. I had provided for at least one whole day's start before any alarm should be given. But the weather secured me, I may say, six weeks before anything could be done in earnest, and then the discovery of that body by a girl who was frightened into fits almost, and it started disinterment, and a universal conclusion about it, which I perhaps helped in some measure to shape. Also the illness, with which it pleased Providence to visit Mishir's oglander and overshoot. I really feel that I have the deepest cause to be grateful, and I trust that I am so. Certainly, my dear, your cause is just, said Mrs. Sharp, as her husband showed some symptoms of dropping off to sleep again, but in carrying it out you have inflicted pain and sad, anxiety on a poor old man. Can he ever forgive you or make it up? I should hope for his own sake, replied the lawyer, that he will cast away any narrow mindedness, otherwise we shall not permit him to rush into the embraces of his daughter. But, if he proves relentless, it matters little, except for the opinion of the world. He cannot touch Portwine's property at all, and he may do what he likes with his own little wealth. His outside value is some forty thousand pounds. However, if I understand him a right, we shall manage to secure his money, too. Tied up, I daresay. But what matters that? He is the most fond papa, and his joy will soon wash away all evil thoughts. How delightful it will be, cried the lady with a sigh. To restore his long-lost child to him, still it will be a most delicate task. You must leave all that to me, Luke. With pleasure, my dear Miranda. Your kind heart quite adapts you for such a melting scene, and indeed I would rather be out of the way, but I want your help for more than that. You shall have it, Luke, with all my heart and soul. It is too late now to draw back, though if you had asked my advice I would have tried to stop you. But just one question more. How did you get rid of John Smith and his inquiries? They say that he is such a very shrewd man. Do you not know? Will nobody ever know the difference between small, uneducated cunning and the clear intelligence of a practised mind? To suppose that John Smith would ever give me any trouble, he has been most useful. I directed his inquiries and exhausted the inquisitive spirit through him. But you did not let him know. Miranda, now I shall go to bed, if I am so very fast asleep. Can no woman ever dream of large utility? I have had no better friend throughout this long anxiety than John Smith, and without expenditure of one farthing I have guided him into the course that he should take. When he hears of anything, the first thing he asks is, Now what would lawyer Sharpie inclined to think of this? Perhaps I have taken more trouble than was needful, but at any rate it would be disgraceful indeed if John Smith could cause me uneasiness. The only man I have ever had the smallest fear of has been Russell Overshoot, not that a young fellow is at all acute, but that he cannot be by any means imbued with the proper respect for my character. How very shocking of him, my dear Luke, when your character has been so many years established! Miranda, it is indeed shocking. But what can be expected of a radical? Ever since that villainous reform bell passed, the spirit of true reverence is destroyed. But he must have some respect for me as soon as he knows all. Although to confess the pure truth, my dear, things have worked in my favor so, that I scarcely deserve any credit at all, except for the original conception. That, however, was a brave one. It was indeed, and I am scarcely brave enough to be comfortable. There is never any knowing how the world may take things. It is true that old Firmitage was not your client, and you had been very badly treated, and had a right to make the most of any knowledge obtained by accident. But old Mr. Oglander is your client, and has trusted you even in the present matter. I do not think that my father would have considered it quite professional to behave so. Mrs. Luke Sharp was alarmed at her own boldness in making such a speech as this. She dropped her eyes under her husband's gaze, but he took her remarks quite calmly. My dear, we will talk of that another time. The fact that I do a thing, after all my experience, should prove it to be not unprofessional. At the present moment I want to go to bed, and if you are anxious to begin hair splitting, that is my immediate refuge. But if you wish to know about the future of your son, you must listen and not try to reason. I did not mean to vex you, Luke. I might have been certain that you knew best, and you always have so many things behind that Solomon himself could never judge you. Tell me all about my darling kit, and I will not even dare to cough or breathe. My dear, it would grieve me to hear you cough, and break my heart if you do not breathe. But I fear that your kit is unworthy of your size. He has lost his young heart beyond redemption, without having the manners to tell his mother. They all do it, Luke. Of course they do. It is no good to find fault with him. I have been expecting that sort of thing so long, and when he went to Spires for the Melanacetrafi, with the yellow stopper to it, I knew as well as possible what he was about. I knew that his precious young heart must be gone, for it cost him seven and six pence. Yes, my dear, and it went the right way, in the very line I had laid for it. I will tell you another time how I managed that, with Hannah Patch, of course, to help me. The poor boy was conquered at first sight, for the weather was cold and the snow still in the ditches, and I gave him six penny worth of brandy balls. So Kit went shooting and got shot according to my arrangement, ever since that the great job has been to temper and guide his rampant energies. And of course he knows nothing. Oh, no, he would be so very unworthy if he did. Oh, do say that he knows nothing, Luke. My dear, I can give you that pleasing assurance. Although it is a puzzling one to me, Christopher Firmited Sharp knows not Grace O'Glander from the young woman in the moon. He believes her to have sailed from a new and better world. Undoubtedly he is my son, Miranda. Yet where did he get his thickheadedness? Mr. Sharp! Miranda, make allowance for me. Such things are truly puzzling. However, you perceive the situation. He was a very fine young fellow in his mother's opinion and his own, desperately smitten with a girl unknown, and romantically situated in a wood. There is reason to believe that this young lady is not insensible to his merits. He looks very nice in his sporting costume. He has no one to compete with him. He is her only bit of life for the day. He leaves her now and then a romantic rabbit, and he rescues her from a ruffian. But here the true difficulty begins. We cannot well unite them in the holy bonds without a clear knowledge on the part of either of the true patronymic of the other. The heroine knows that the hero rejoices in the good and useful name of Sharp. But he knows not that his lady-love is one Grace Oglander of Beckley Barton. Here again you perceive a fine stroke of justice. Esquire Oglander had only extended his hospitalities to us. Christopher must have known Grace quite well, and I could not have brought them together so. At present he believes her to be a Miss Holland from the United States of America, and as she has promised Miss Patch not to speak of her own affairs to anybody, according to her father's wish in one of the Demerara letters, that idea of his might still continue. Although she has begun to ask him questions which are not at all convenient, but things must be brought to a point as soon as possible, having the advantage of directing the inquiries or at any rate being consulted about them, I see no great element of danger yet. And, of course, I launched all the first expeditions in every direction but the right one. That setting up of the tombstone by the poor old Joan was a very heavy blow to the inquisitive. But, my dear, that did not make the poor girl dead a bit more than she was dead before. Miranda, you do not understand the world. The evidence of a tombstone is the strongest there can be, and beats that of fifty living witnesses. I won the most difficult case for our firm when I was an ardent youth, and the victory enabled me to aspire to your hand. By taking a mallet and a chisel and a little nitric acid and converting a Francis by moonlight into a Francis, I kept the matter to myself, of course, for your good father was a squeamish hand, but you have heard me speak of it. Yes, but I thought it's so wrong, my dear, even though, as you said, truth required it. Truth did require it. The old stonemason had not known how to spell the word. I corrected his heterography, and we confounded the tricks of the evil ones. All is fair in love and law so long as violence is done to neither. And now I wish the kits unsophisticated mind to be led to the perception of that great truth. It is needful for him to be delicately admitted to the knowledge of my intentions. There is nobody who can do this as you can. He takes rather clumsy and obstinate views of things he is too young to understand. The main point of all with a mind like his is to dwell upon the justice of our case and the depth of our affection, which has led to such a sacrifice of the common conventional view of things. My dear, but I have had nothing to do with it. Conception, plan, and execution are all your own, and no other persons. Why, I had not even dreamed. Still you must put it to him, Miranda, as if it was your doing more than mine. He has more faith in your—well, what shall I call it? I would not for a moment wrong him by supposing that he doubts his own father's integrity. In your practical judgment, let us say, and perception of the nicest principles is absolutely necessary that you should appear to have acted throughout in close unison with me. In fact, it would be better to let the boy perceive that the whole idea from the very first was yours, as in simple fact it must have been, if circumstance had permitted me to tell you all that I desired. To any idea of yours he takes more kindly, perhaps than to those which are mine. This is not quite correct, some would say, but I am above jealousy. I always desire that he should love his mother and make a pattern of her. His poor father gets knocked about here and there and cannot halt to keep himself rigidly upright, though it always is his ambition. But women are so different, and so much better, even Kit perceives that truth. Let him know, my darling, that your peace of mind is entirely staked upon his following out the plan which you mean to propose to him. But my dear Luke, I have not the least notion of any plan of any sort. Never mind, Miranda, make him promise. I will tell you all about it afterwards. It is better not to let him know too much. Knowledge should come in small doses always, otherwise it puffs up young people. Alas, how I feel that I am not as I was. Twenty years ago I could have sat up all night talking and not shown a sign of it the next day. I have not had any sleep for the last twelve nights. Do you see any rays in my eyes, dear wife? They are sure indications of heart disease. When I am tired they always come. Oh, Luke! Luke, will you break my heart? You shall not say another word. Have some more negus. I insist upon it. It is no good to put your hand over the glass, and then come to bed immediately. You are working too hard for your family, my pet. Now being newly inspired by that warm theologian, as Miss Patch really believed him to be, Luke Sharp, the lady felt capable of a bold stroke, which her conscience had seemed to cry out against, till loftier thoughts enlarged it. She delivered to her dear niece a letter, written in pale ink and upon strange paper, which she drew from a thicker one addressed to herself, and received through their butcher from a post office. Wondering who their butcher was but delighted to get her dear father's letter, Grace ran away to devour it. It was dated from Georgetown, English Guyana, and though full of affection, showed touching traces of delicate health and despondency. The poor girl wiped her eyes at her father's tender longing to see her once more, and his earnest prayers for every blessing upon their invaluable friend, Miss Patch. And he spoke of himself in a matter which made it impossible for her to keep her eyes wiped, so deep was his sadness, and yet, so heroically, did he attempt to conceal it from her? And then came a few lines, which surprised her greatly. He said that a little bird had told him that during her strict retirement from the world, in accordance with his wishes, she had learned to esteem a most worthy young man, for whom he had always felt warm regard, and he might even say, affection. He doubted whether, at his own time of life, and with this strange linger creeping over him, he could ever bear the voyage to England, unless his little darling would come over to fetch him, or at least to behold him once more alive. And if she would do so, she must indeed be quick. He need not say that to dream of her traveling so far alone was impossible, but if, for the sake of her father, she could dispense with some old formalities, and speedily carry out their mutual choice, he might with his whole heart appeal to her husband to bring her out by the next packet. He said little more, except that he had learned by the bitter teaching of adversity, who were his true friends, and who were false. No one had shown any truth in reality, except Mr. Sharp of Oxford, but he never could have dreamed, till it came to the test, that even the lowest of the low would treat him as young Mr. Overshoot had done. That subject was too painful. So he ended with another adoration to his daughter. Auntie, I have had the most extraordinary letter. cried Grace, coming in with her eyes quite dreadful. It astonishes me beyond everything. May I see the postmark of yours, which it came in? I think that I am dreaming till I see the postmark. The stamp of the office, do you mean, my dear? Oh, yes, you are welcome to see, Grace. Here it is. Georgetown, de Marara. The date is not quite clear without my spectacles. Those foreign dyes are always cut so badly. Never mind the date, aunt. I have the date inside in my father's writing, but I am quite astonished how my father can have heard something about you, sly little puss. You need not blush so, for I long have guessed it, but indeed it is not true. Indeed it is not. I may have been amused, but never—never—oh, what he says then of somebody else. Such a thing I should have thought impossible. How can one have any faith in anyone? My dear child, what you mean is this. How can one have any faith in worldly and ungodly people? With their mouths they speak deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips. Oh, no, he never was ungodly. To see him walk would show you that. And if being good to the poor sick people and dashing into the middle of the whooping cough—how am I to know of whom you speak? You appear to have acted in a very forward way with someone your father disapproves of. I assure you I never did anything of the kind. It is not at all my manner. I thought you considered it wrong to make unfounded accusations. Grace, what a most un-christian temper you still continue to display at times. Your cheeks are quite red, and your eyes excited, in a way very sad to witness. The trouble I have taken is beyond all knowledge. If you do not value it, your father does. Aunty Patch, may I see exactly what my daddy says to you? I will show you mine, if you will show me yours. My dear, you seem to forget continually. You treat me as if I were of your own age, and had never been through the very first alarm which comes for our salvation. It has not come to you, or you could not be so frivolous and worldly as you are. When first it rang even for myself, how many times does it ring out? I mean for every individual sinner as you always call us. My dear, it rings three times. It has been proved by the most inspired of all modern preachers, the Reverend William Romain, while amplifying the blessed words of the pious Joseph Aline. He begins his discourse upon it thus. Aunty, you have told me that so many times that I could go up into his desk and do it. It is all so very good and superior, but there are times when it will not come. You, or at any rate I, for certain, may go down on our knees and pray, and nothing ever comes of it. I have been at it every night and morning, really quite letting go whatever I was thinking of, and what is there to come of it, except this letter, and it doesn't sound as if my father ever wrote a word of it. Grace, what do you mean, if you please? I mean what I do not please. I mean that I have been here at least five months, as long as any fifty, and have put up with the miserable as things. Now never mind about my English, if you please. It is quite good enough for such a place as this, and have done my very best to put up with you, who are enough to take fifty people's lives away with perpetual propriety, and have hoped and hoped and prayed and prayed till my knees are not fit to be looked at. And now, after all, what has come of it? That I am to marry a boy with a red cord down his legs, and a crystal in his whip, and a pretty face that seems to come from his mama's watch pocket, and a very nice and gentle way of looking at a lady, as if he were quite capable, if he had the opportunity of saying bow to any goose on the other side of the river. My dear, do you prefer bold ruffians then, like the vagabond you were rescued from? I don't know at all what I do prefer, Aunt Patch, unless it is just to be left to myself, and have nothing to say to anyone. Why, Grace, that is the very thing you complained of in your sinful and ungrateful speech just now, but do not disturb me with any more temper. I must take the opportunity before the mail goes out to tell your poor, sick father how you have received his letter. Oh, no, if you please not, you are quite mistaken if you think that I thought of myself first. My dear father knows that I never would do that, and it would be quite vain to tell him so. My darling, darling father, where are you now and whatever are you doing? Grace, you are becoming outrageous quite. You know quite well where your father is, and as to what he is doing, you know from his own letter that he is lying ill, and longing for you to attend upon him, and this is the way that you qualify yourself. Somehow or other now I do not mean to be wicked, aunt, but I don't think my father ever wrote that letter. I mean at any rate of his own free will. Somebody must have stood over him. I feel as if I really saw them, and made him say this and that, and things that he never used to think of saying. Why, he never would have dreamed when he was well of telling me I was to marry anybody. He was so jealous of me. He could hardly bear any gentleman to dare to smile, and he used to make me promise to begin to let him know five years before I thought of any one, and now for him to tell me to marry in a week, just as if he was putting down a silver side to salt, and marry a boy that he's scarcely ever heard of, and never even introduced to me. He must have been. He cannot but have been, either wonderfully affected by the climate, or shackled down in a slave-driver's dungeon, until he had no idea what he was about. Have you finished, Grace, now? Is your violence over? No. I have no violence, and it is not half over. But still, if you wish to say anything, I will do all I can to listen to it. You are most obliging. One would really think that I were seventeen, and you nearly seventy. On patch, you know that I am as good as nineteen, and instead of being seventy, you are scarcely fifty-five. Grace, your memory is better about ages than about what you do not wish to hear of, and you do not wish to hear with the common selfishness of the period, of the duty which is the most sacred of all, and at the same time the noblest privilege, the duty of self-sacrifice. What are your own little inclinations, pretty conceits and miserable jokes, jokes that are ever a deadly enmity with all deep religion? Ah, what are they you selfish and frivolous girl, when set in the balance with a parent's life, and a parent whose life would have been in no danger but for his perfect devotion to you? And, patch, I never heard you speak of my father at all in that sort of way before. You generally talk of him as if he were careless and worldly and heterodox, most frivolous and quite unregenerate. And now, quite suddenly, you find out all his value. What do you want me to do so much, aren't patch? Don't look at me like that, child. You quite insult me, as if it could matter to me what you do, except for your own eternal welfare. If you think it the right thing to let your father die in a savage land, calling vainly for you, and buried among land-crabs without a drop of water, that is a matter for you, hereafter, to render your own account of. You have tired me, Grace. I am not so young as you are, and I have more feeling. I must lie down a little. You have so upset me. When you have recovered your proper frame of mind, perhaps you will kindly see that Marjorie has washed out the little brown teapot. To be sure, auntie, I am up to all her tricks, and I will just toast you a water-biscuit, and put a morsel of salt-butter on it, scarcely so large as a little French bean. Go to sleep, auntie, for about an hour. I am getting into a very proper frame of mind. I can never stay very long out of it. May I go into the wood just to think a little of my darling father's letter? Yes, Grace. But not for more than half an hour. On condition that you speak to no one, you have made my headache, sadly. Leave your father's letter here. Oh, no, if you please, let me take it with me. How can I think without it? Miss Patch was so sleepy that she said, Very well, let me see it again when you have made the tea, whereupon Grace, having beaten up the cushion of a good lady's only luxury, and laid her down softly and kissed her forehead, for fear of having made a date, stole her own chance for a little quiet thought, in a shelter of the woods more soft than thought. For the summer was coming with a stride of light and bashful corners full of lateness, tried to ease it off with moss. In a nook of this kind, far from any path, and tenderly withdrawn into its own green rest, the lonely and bewildered girl stopped suddenly, and began to think. She drew forth the letter which had grieved her so, and she wondered that it had not grieved her more. It was not yet clear to her young frank mind that suspicion, like a mole, was at work in it, to get her thoughts better and to feel some goodness she sat upon a peaceful turret of new spear-grass, and spread her letter open and began to cry. She knew that this was not at all the proper way to take things, and yet if any one had come and preached to her, and proved it all, she could have made no other answer than to cry the more for it. The beautiful light of the glancing day turned corners, and came round to her, the lovable joy of the many, many things which there is no time to notice, spread itself silently upon the air, or told itself only in fragrance, and the glossy young blades of grass stood up, and complacently measured their shadows. Here lay grace for a long, sad hour, taking no heed of the things around her, however much they heeded her, the white-wind flower with its drooping bells, and the blue bell, and the hair-bell, and the pask-flower, softest of all soft tints, likewise a delicate stitch-wort, and the breath of the lingering primrose, and the white violet that outvies its sister, that sweet usurper of the colored name, in fragrance and purity, and, hiding for its life without anyone to seek the sensitive wood-sorrow, and in, and out, and behind them all the cups, and the sceptres, and the balls of moss, and the shells, and the combs of lichen. In the middle of the hole, this foolish maid had not one thought to throw to them. She ought to have sighed at their power of coming one after another for ever, whereas her own life was but a morning dew, but she failed to make any such reflection. What she was thinking of she never could have told, except that she had a long letter in her lap, and could not bring her mind to it. And here, in the hollow, when the warmth came round, of the evening fringed with cloudlets, she was fairer than any of the buds or flowers, and ever so much larger, but she could not be allowed to bloom like them. Oh! I beg pardon! cried an unseen stranger in a very clear, keen voice. I fear I am intruding in some private grounds. I was making a shortcut, which generally is a long one. If you will just show me how to get out again, I will get out with all speed and thank you. Grace looked round with surprise, but no fear. She knew that the voice was a gentleman's, but until she got up, and looked up at the little hollow, she could not see anyone. Please, do not be frightened! said the gentleman again. I deserved to be punished, perhaps, but not to that extent. I have fancied that I knew every copes of the county. I have proved a must suffer for my ignorance. As he spoke he came forward on a little, turfy ledge, about thirty feet above her, and she saw that he looked at her with great surprise. She felt that she had been crying very sadly, and this might have made her eyes look strange. Quite as if by accident she let her hair drop forward, for she could not bear to be so observed, and at that very moment there flowed a gleam of sunshine through it. This was the very painting of the picture in her father's room. Saints in heaven! cried Hardinow, who never went further than this in amazement. I have found Grace Oglander. Stop, if you please. I beseech you, stop. But Grace was so frightened and so pledge-bound that no adoration stopped her. If Hardinow had only been less eager, there and then he might have made his bow, and introduced himself. But Gracie thought of the rabbit man, and her promise, and her loneliness, and without looking back she was round the corner, and not a ribbon left to trace her by. And now again if Hardinow had only been less eager he might have caught the fair fugitive by following in her footsteps. But for such a simple course as that he was much too clever, instead of running down at once to the spot where she had vanished, and then skiving chase he must needs try a cross cut to intercept her. There were trees and bushes in the way it was true, but he would very soon get through them, and to meet her face to face would be more dignified than to run after her. He made a beautifully correct cast as to the line she must have taken, and aiming well ahead of her, leaped the crest of the hollow and set off down the hill apace. But here he was suddenly checked by meeting a dense row of hollies, which he had not seen by reason of the brushwood, and a dauntless matter he dashed in among them scratching his face and hands and losing a fine large piece of black cursey-mir from the skirt of his coat, and suffering many other lesser damages. But what was far worse he lost grace also, for out of that holly grove you could not get for a long, long time, and even then he found himself on the wrong side, the one where he had entered. If good-angle Catholics ever did swear, the Reverend Thomas Hard Now must now have sworn, for his plight was of that kind which engenders wrath in the patient and pleasantry of the part of the spectator. His face suggested recent duolo with a cat, his white tie was tattered and hanging down his back, his typical coat was a mere postillian's jacket, and the condition of his gators afforded to the skeptic the clearest proof of the sad effects of perpetual self-denial. His hat, with the instinct of self-preservation, had rolled out from the thicket when he first rushed in, and now he picked up this wiser portion of his head, and was thankful to have something left. Chances were against him. But what is chance? He had an exceedingly strong will of his own, and, having had the worst of this matter so far, he doubly resolved to go through with it. Without a second thought about his present guise or aspect, he ran back to the spot which he had left so unadvisedly. There he did what he ought to have done ten minutes or a quarter of an hour ago. He ran down the slope to the nest in the nook which had been occupied by Grace. Then he took to the track which he had taken, but she had been much too quick for him. She had even snatched up her letter, so that he was none the wiser. He came to a spot where the narrow and thickly woven trackway broke into two, and weather of the two to choose was more than a moment stout to him. Then he seemed to see some glint of footsteps, and sweep of soft sprays by a dress towards the right, and making a dash through the dark hole towards it was straight away enveloped in a doubled rabbit net cast over his surviving hat. "'Hold on tight, George. Now thou'dst got one!' cried out somebody whom he could not see. "'Poaching, son of a gun, nozzle poaching!' "'Poaching!' my good friends cried hard now trying to lift his arms and turn his head round all vainly. "'You can scarcely know the meaning of that word, or you never would think of applying it to me. Let me see you, that I may explain. I have been trespassing, I am afraid, but by the purest accident allow me to turn round and reason quietly. I have the greatest objection to violence. I never use nor allow it to be used. If you are honest game-keepers exceeding your duty through earnest zeal, I would be the last to find fault with you. Want of earnestness is the great fault of this age, but you must not allow yourselves to be misled by some little recent mischances to my clothes. Such things befall about everybody exploring unknown places. You are pulling me. You are exceeding your duty. Is the bucolic mind so dense? Here I am at your mercy. Just show yourselves. You may choke me if you like, but the result will be out, that you will also be choked yourselves. "'A rare, fine, plucked one, as ever I see,' said rabbiting George the Leviticus Crips when hard now lay between them, senseless from the pressure upon his throat. Ease him off a bit, my lad. He never done no harm to me. They long-coated Parsons as good old women, and he be cut up into a young gal now. They hold on that poor double right and foremost. Soon as I have stopped and preaching, did ever you see such a guy out of a barrel?' Heavy-witted ticus made no answer, but laid hold of the captive by his shoulders, so that himself might be still unseen, if consciousness should return too soon. Black George tucked the feet under his arm after winding the tail of the net round the shanks, and expressing surprise at their slimness, and in no better way than this these two ignorant bumpkins swung the body of one of the leading spirits of the rising age to the hog-pound. Thomas Hardenow was not the man to be long insensible. Every fiber of his frame was a wire of electric life. He was all there to use the slang expression, which by some wondrous accident has a little pith in it, in about two minutes not a bit of him was absent, and he showed it by hanging like a lump upon his bearers as they fetched him to an empty hog-house, dropped him anyhow and locked him in, then one of them jumped on a little horse and galloped off to Oxford. CHAPTER 47 COMBINED WISDOM I really cannot go on like this, so Mr. Sharpe to miss the Sharpe, quite early on the following morning. Thank God I am not of a nervous nature, and patience is one of my largest virtues, but acting as I have done for the best I cannot expect to put up with perpetual suspense. This very day I will settle this matter one way or the other. The lawyer for the first time now was flurried. He had heard of the capture of a spy last night, or so poor Hardenow had been described, and though he had kept that new matter to himself he was puzzled to see his way through with it. Luke, my dear, replied Mr. Sharpe with some of her tightening's not done up. Surely there need not be much hurry. You make me quite shiver when you speak like that. I shall come down to breakfast without any power, and the port meadow eel will go out for the maids. Should we ever behold it again, Luke? Of course not. How could you expect it? Slippery, slippery. Hard it is to lay fast hold of anything, and the worst of all to bind is woman. I did not mean you, my dear. You need not look like that. You're as firm as this tag of your stays. Of course it, of course it. I beg your pardon. How can a man tell all the fashionable words? But, Luke, you surely would not think of proceeding to extremities? Any extremity, if it only were the last. For the good of my family I have worked hard, and there never should have been all this worry with it, Miranda. I may have strayed outside to truth, and outside the law, which is so much larger, but one thing I beg you to bear in mind, not a thing have I done except for you and Kit. Money, to me, is the last thing I think of. Burefaction is the very first, and no one can meddle with your settlement. Oh, my darling! Mrs. Sharp exclaimed as she fell back from looking at the looking-glass. You are almost too good for this world, Luke. You think of everybody in the world except yourself. It is not the right way to get on, dear. We must try to be a little harder. I have thought so, Miranda. I must try to do it. Petty little sentiments must be dropped. We must rise and face the state of things which it is pleased providence to bring about. I am responsible for a great deal of it, and with your assistance I will see it through. We must take Kit in hand at once. My dear wife, can I rely upon you? Luke, you must rely upon me for anything short of perjury, and if it comes to that I must think first. No man ever had a better any more than he could have a truer wife, or one so perpetually young. With these words Mr. Sharp performs some little operations which, even in the highest circles, are sometimes allowed to be brought about by muscular hands, when clever enough, and before very long this affectionate pair went down to breakfast and enjoyed fried eel. Kit, who had caught this fine eel, was not there. Perhaps he was gone forth to catch another, so they left him the tail to be warmed up. In the present condition of his active mind and the mournful absence of his beloved, Christopher found a dark and moody pleasure in laying night lines. If his snare were successful he hauled out his victim, and with a scornful smile dispatched him. If the line held nothing he casted in again, with a sigh of habitual frustration. This morning, however, he was not gone forth on his usual round of inspection, but it only walked up to the livery-stables to make sure of his favorite hack for the day. He had made up his mind that he must see grace that very same day, come what would of it, he would go much earlier and watch the door, and if this bad fortune still continued he would rush up at last and declare himself. But this bold resolve had a different issue, for no sooner had the young man with some reluctance and self-reproach dealt bravely with a solid breakfast, than he was requested by his dear mother to come into his father's little study. Now this invitation was not in accordance with the present mood of Christopher. He made up his mind to be off, right soon, for the bowers of his beloved, with a roll and some tongue and his little fishing-creel, and a bottle of beer in each holster, in the depth of the wood he might thus get on and enjoy to the utmost fruition of his heart all the beauty of nature around him, whose a cruel blow to March just then to a lecture from the Governor, whose little private study he particularly loathed, and regarded as the den of the evil one, however he set up his pluck and went. Mr. Sharp, looking, if possible, more upright and bright than usual, sat in front of the large and strong legged desk, where he kept his more private records, such as never went into the office. Mr. Sharp also took a legal chair and contemplated kit with a softer gaze. He, with a beating heart, stood up like a youth under orders to construe. My son, began the father and master in a manner large and affable, prepare yourself for a little surprise on the part of those whose principal object is your truest welfare. For some weeks now you have made your dear mother anxious and unhappy, by certain proceedings which you thought it wise and manly to conceal from her. Yes, you know you did it, Kit. Mrs. Sharp interposed, shaking her soft curls, and trying to look fierce. The boy with a deep plush looked at her, as if everybody now was against him. Rest of her, we will not blame you. Resume, Mr. Sharp, rather hastily for fear that his wife should jump up and spoil all. Our object in calling you is not that. You have acted according to our wishes mainly, though you need not have done it so furtively. You have formed an attachment to a certain young lady who leads, for the present, a retired life, in a quiet part of Old Stowe Wood, and she returns your affection. Is it so, or is it not? I—I—Stammered, Kit, seeking for his mother's eyes which had buried themselves in her handkerchief. I can't say a word about what she thinks. She—she—she has got such a fashion of running away so. But I—I—well, then it's no good telling a lie about it. I am ducidly fond of her. That is exactly what I wish to know, though not expressed very tastefully. Well, and did you know who she is, my son? Yes, I know all that quite well, as much as any fellow wants to know. She is young lady, and she knows all the flowers, and the birds, and the names of the trees almost. She can put me right about kings of England, and she knows my dogs as well as I do. A highly accomplished young lady, in short. Yes, I should say a great deal more than that. I care very little for accomplishments. But—but if I must come to the point—I do like her, and no mistake—then you would not like some other man to come and run away with her, quite against her will? That man must run over my body first! cried Kit, with so much spirit that his father looked proud, and his poor mother trembled. Well, well, my boy! continued the good lawyer. It'll be your own fault if this villain gets the chance. I am doing all I can to provide against it, and am even obliged to employ some means of nature, not at all congenial to me, for—for that very reason. You are sure that you love this young lady, Kit? Father, I would not say anything strong, but I would go on my knees all the way from here to there, for the smallest chance of getting her. Very good! That is as it should be. I would have done the very same for your dear mother. Mama, you have often reminded me of it, when anything—well, those are reminiscences. But they lie at the bottom of everything. A mercenary marriage is an outrage to all good feeling. She has not got a six-pence, Father. She told me so. She makes all the bread, and she puts by all the dripping. My dear boy, you know then what a good wife is. Mama, we shall have to clear out the room where the rocking-horse is, and the old magic lantern, and let this young couple go into it. My dear, it would be a long job, and there is a great many cracks in the paper. But still, we could have in old Josephine. Those are mere dear tales, Mama. But this is a serious question, and the boy must not be hurried. He may not have made up his mind, or he may desire to change it to-morrow. He is too young to have any settled will, and there is no reason why he should not wait. Not a day would I wait. Not an hour would I wait. In ten minutes I could pack everything. He might wait for a twelve-month, my dear Miranda, and sound his own feelings, and the young girls, too. If we could only be certain that the young man of rank with the four-bay horses was not in earnest when he swore to carry her off to-morrow. My dear husband, Mrs. Sharpe said softly, let us hope that he meant nothing by it. Such things are frequently said and come to nothing. I tell you what it is. Kid almost shouted with his fist upon the sacred desk. You cannot in any way enter into my feelings upon such matters. I beg your pardon, that is not what I mean, and I ought never to have said it. But still, comparatively speaking, you can take these things easily, and go on, and think people foolish. But I cannot. I know when my mind is made up, and I do it. And to stop me with all sorts of nonsense, at least to find fifty reasons why I should do nothing, is the surest of all ways to make me do it. I have many people who will follow me thick and thin, though you may not believe it, because you cannot understand me, and your views are confined to propriety. Mine are not, and you may find that out in a very short time. At any rate, if I do a thing that brings you, father and mother, into any evil words, all I can say is you never should have stopped me. With his very lucid expression of ideas, Christopher strode away and left his parents petrified, as he thought. Mrs. Sharpe was inclined to be a dripping well, and Mr. Sharpe was dry enough. Exactly. Exactly. He said, as he always said, when a thing had come up to his reckoning. Nothing could have been done much better. Put the money in his best breeches pocket, my dear, without my knowledge, and at the back door kiss him. Adure him to do nothing rash, and lend him your own wedding ring, and weep, for a runaway match the most lucky of all things is the boy's mother's wedding ring, and above all things, not a word about his rival, until he asks. And then, all mystery, only you know a great deal more than you dare tell. Oh, Luke, are you sure that it will all go all right? Miranda, tell me anything we can be sure of, and you will have given me a new idea, and I want ideas. I want them, sadly. My power of invention is failing me, or at any rate, that of combining my inventions. You did not observe that I was nervous, did you? Nervous? Luke, you? Nervous? I should think that the end of the world was coming, if I saw any nervousness in you, and in the presence of a boy, indeed. My dear wife, I will give you my word that I felt. Well, I will not say nervous, if you dislike it, but a little uncomfortable and not quite clear when I saw how Kit was taking things. Real affection is a dreadful thing. I did not want so much of it. I meant to have told him who she is, till the turn of things made me doubt about it, but he is quite up for anything now, I believe, though he must be told before he goes. He is such a calf that he must not imagine that she has a sixpence to bless herself. He would fly off in a moment, if he guessed the truth. He must know her name. And that you must tell him, and you know how to explain it all a thousand fold better than I do. Possibly I do, replied Mr. Sharp. I may have some very few ideas of my own. Although according to you, Mr. Sharp, I am only the mother of a calf. Very well said, my dear, and I have the honor of being his father. They smiled at one another, for they both knew how to give and take.