ss way, so that
his ganglionic centre was in a ten times worse state than when he left
Raynham. He wrote very bitterly, but it was hard to feel compassion for
his offended stomach.

On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had
despatched no tidings whatever. Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening
after evening, vastly disturbed. London was a large place--young Tom
might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses. A
wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London, as yokels
have proved. But what had become of Lucy? This consideration almost sent
Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his
pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant and get into
a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of,
unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had
behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while
he had the chance. It was a long guess. Still it was the only reasonable
way of accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the
farmer held to it that he had done the deed. He argued as modern men do
who think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from
us. So, after despatching a letter to a friend in town to be on the
outlook for son Tom, he continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather
elated than not, and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when
Master Honeymoon did appear.

Toward the middle of the second week of Richard's absence, Tom Bakewell
came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the
Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum.
The Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter in
return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep the
heroic engine in motion at a moderate pace. Tom went back, and Raynham
and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of the morrow. The System, wedded to
Time, slept, and knew not how he had been outraged--anticipated by seven
pregnant seasons. For Time had heard the hero swear to that legalizing
instrument, and had also registered an oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew
Time! he is unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of the world comes
of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once
done him a wrong. They cannot escape him. They will never outlive it.
The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business
of