shrugged
his shoulders and murmured to himself, "No, I don't think that will do.
Besides, I must be at Hurstley by that time."

Going to Hurstley now was not so formidable an affair as it was in
Endymion's boyhood. Then the journey occupied a whole and wearisome
day. Little Hurstley had become a busy station of the great Slap-Bang
railway, and a despatch train landed you at the bustling and flourishing
hostelry, our old and humble friend, the Horse Shoe, within the
two hours. It was a rate that satisfied even Thornberry, and almost
reconciled him to the too frequent presence of his wife and family at
Hurstley, a place to which Mrs. Thornberry had, it would seem, become
passionately attached.

"There is a charm about the place, I must say," said Job to himself,
as he reached his picturesque home on a rich summer evening; "and yet I
hated it as a boy. To be sure, I was then discontented and unhappy, and
now I have every reason to be much the reverse. Our feelings affect
even scenery. It certainly is a pretty place; I really think one of the
prettiest places in England."

Job was cordially welcomed. His wife embraced him, and the younger
children clung to him with an affection which was not diminished by the
remembrance that their father never visited them with empty hands. His
eldest son, a good-looking and well-grown stripling, just home for the
holidays, stood apart, determined to show he was a man of the world, and
superior to the weakness of domestic sensibility. When the hubbub was a
little over, he advanced and shook hands with his father with a certain
dignity.

"And when did you arrive, my boy? I was looking up your train in
Bradshaw as I came along. I made out you should get the branch at
Culvers Gate."

"I drove over," replied the son; "I and a friend of mine drove tandem,
and I'll bet we got here sooner than we should have done by the branch."

"Hem!" said Job Thornberry.

"Job," said Mrs. Thornberry, "I have made two engagements for you this
evening. First, we will go and see your father, and then we are to drink
tea at the rectory."

"Hem!" said Job Thornberry; "well, I would rather the first evening
should have been a quiet one; but let it be so."

The visit to the father was kind, dutiful, and wearisome. There was not
a single subject on which the father and son had thoughts in common. The
conversation of the father took various forms of expressing his wonder
that his son had become what he was,