drian. He gave Richard his choice, who saw which way his father's
wishes tended, and decided so to please him. Naturally it annoyed Adrian
extremely. He said to his chief:

"I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don't see that we derive
any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty
years of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our constitutional
tendency to stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered
Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have been huge, but I would rather
society were not intimate with them under their several headings."
Adrian enumerated some of the most abhorrent. "You know him, sir. If he
conceives a duty, he will do it in the face of every decency--all the
more obstinate because the conception is rare. If he feels a little
brisk the morning after the pill, he sends the letter that makes us
famous! We go down to posterity with heightened characteristics, to say
nothing of a contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned
inside-out to the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery
made bare to them."

Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to Dr.
Bairam. He softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that in about two
weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a prospective Summer
campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day came.
Madame the Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber and put into his
hand a fifty-pound note, as her contribution toward his pocket-expenses.
He did not want it, he said, but she told him he was a young man, and
would soon make that fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady
did not at all approve of the System in her heart, and she gave her
grandnephew to understand that, should he require more, he knew where
to apply, and secrets would be kept. His father presented him with a
hundred pounds--which also Richard said he did not want--he did not care
for money. "Spend it or not," said the baronet, perfectly secure in him.

Hippias had few injunctions to observe. They were to take up quarters
at the hotel, Algernon's general run of company at the house not being
altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of
the imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man's movements, and
letting him imagine he was under surveillance. Richard having been, as
it were, pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom
again, in