e thought besides (policy not being always a vacant
space in revengeful acts) that Anthony was capable of something stronger
and warmer, now that his humanity had been aroused. The speculation is
commonly perilous; but Farmer Fleming had the desperation of a man who
has run slightly into debt, and has heard the first din of dunning, which
to the unaccustomed imagination is fearful as bankruptcy (shorn of the
horror of the word). And, moreover, it was so wonderful to find Anthony
displaying humanity at all, that anything might be expected of him.
"Let's see what he will do," thought the farmer in an interval of his
wrath; and the wrath is very new which has none of these cool intervals.
The passions, do but watch them, are all more or less intermittent.

As it chanced, he acted sagaciously, for Anthony at last wrote to say
that his home in London was cheerless, and that he intended to move into
fresh and airier lodgings, where the presence of a discreet young
housekeeper, who might wish to see London, and make acquaintance with the
world, would be agreeable to him. His project was that one of his nieces
should fill this office, and he requested his brother-in-law to reflect
on it, and to think of him as of a friend of the family, now and in the
time to come. Anthony spoke of the seductions of London quite unctuously.
Who could imagine this to be the letter of an old crabbed miser? "Tell
her," he said, "there's fruit at stalls at every street-corner all the
year through--oysters and whelks, if she likes--winkles, lots of pictures
in shops--a sight of muslin and silks, and rides on omnibuses--bands of
all sorts, and now and then we can take a walk to see the military on
horseback, if she's for soldiers." Indeed, he joked quite comically in
speaking of the famous horse-guards--warriors who sit on their horses to
be looked at, and do not mind it, because they are trained so thoroughly.
"Horse-guards blue, and horse-guards red," he wrote--"the blue only want
boiling." There is reason to suppose that his disrespectful joke was not
original in him, but it displayed his character in a fresh light. Of
course, if either of the girls was to go, Dahlia was the person. The
farmer commenced his usual process of sitting upon the idea. That it
would be policy to attach one of the family to this chirping old miser,
he thought incontestable. On the other hand, he had a dread of London,
and Dahlia was surpassingly fair. He put the case to Ro