ommit Tom and when
he heard that Tom looked up at me and I say he is a noble fellow and no
one shall sneer at Tom while I live. Mind that. Well Sir Miles asked us
to dine with him and Tom was safe and I am to have him and educate him
if I like for my servant and I will. And I will give money to his mother
and make her rich and he shall never repent he knew me. I say Rip. The
Bantam must have seen me. It was when I went to stick in the lucifers.
As we were all going home from Sir Miles's at night he has lots of
red-faced daughters but I did not dance with them though they had music
and were full of fun and I did not care to I was so delighted and almost
let it out. When we left and rode home Rady said to my father the Bantam
was not such a fool as he was thought and my father said one must be in
a state of great personal exaltation to apply that epithet to any man
and Rady shut his mouth and I gave my pony a clap of the heel for joy.
I think my father suspects what Rady did and does not approve of it. And
he need not have done it after all and might have spoilt it. I have been
obliged to order him not to call me Ricky for he stops short at Rick
so that everybody knows what he means. My dear Austin is going to South
America. My pony is in capital condition. My father is the cleverest
and best man in the world. Clare is a little better. I am quite happy.
I hope we shall meet soon my dear Old Rip and we will not get into any
more tremendous scrapes will we.--I remain,

"Your sworn friend,

"RICHARD DORIA FEVEREL."

"P.S. I am to have a nice River Yacht. Good-bye, Rip. Mind you learn to
box. Mind you are not to show this to any of your friends on pain of my
displeasure.

"N.B. Lady B. was so angry when I told her that I had not come to her
before. She would do anything in the world for me. I like her next best
to my father and Austin. Good-bye old Rip."

Poor little Letitia, after three perusals of this ingenuous epistle,
where the laws of punctuation were so disregarded, resigned it to one of
the pockets of her brother Ripton's best jacket, deeply smitten with the
careless composer. And so ended the last act of the Bakewell Comedy, in
which the curtain closes with Sir Austin's pointing out to his friends
the beneficial action of the System in it from beginning to end.

CHAPTER XII

Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the apparition
that had frightened little Clare