to Oare,
unless indeed I should go afoot, and beg my sustenance by the way, which
seemed to be below me. Therefore I got my few clothes packed, and my few
debts paid, all ready to start in half an hour, if only they would give
me enough to set out upon the road with. For I doubted not, being young
and strong, that I could walk from London to Oare in ten days or in
twelve at most, which was not much longer than horse-work; only I had
been a fool, as you will say when you hear it. For after receiving from
Master Spank the amount of the bill which I had delivered--less indeed
by fifty shillings than the money my mother had given me, for I had
spent fifty shillings, and more, in seeing the town and treating people,
which I could not charge to His Majesty--I had first paid all my debts
thereout, which were not very many, and then supposing myself to be an
established creditor of the Treasury for my coming needs, and already
scenting the country air, and foreseeing the joy of my mother, what had
I done but spent half my balance, ay and more than three-quarters of it,
upon presents for mother, and Annie, and Lizzie, John Fry, and his wife,
and Betty Muxworthy, Bill Dadds, Jim Slocombe, and, in a word, half of
the rest of the people at Oare, including all the Snowe family, who must
have things good and handsome? And if I must while I am about it, hide
nothing from those who read me, I had actually bought for Lorna a thing
the price of which quite frightened me, till the shopkeeper said it was
nothing at all, and that no young man, with a lady to love him, could
dare to offer her rubbish, such as the Jew sold across the way. Now the
mere idea of beautiful Lorna ever loving me, which he talked about as
patly (though of course I never mentioned her) as if it were a settled
thing, and he knew all about it, that mere idea so drove me abroad,
that if he had asked three times as much, I could never have counted the
money.

Now in all this I was a fool of course--not for remembering my friends
and neighbours, which a man has a right to do, and indeed is bound to
do, when he comes from London--but for not being certified first what
cash I had to go on with. And to my great amazement, when I went with
another bill for the victuals of only three days more, and a week's
expense on the homeward road reckoned very narrowly, Master Spank not
only refused to grant me any interview, but sent me out a piece of blue
paper, looking like a butcher