“I wish you would:  I’m sure he wants some one to look after him just now.  He’s half wild about some review that somebody’s been and done of him in The Times, and has been flinging the paper about the room, and calling all mankind vipers and adders, and hooting herds—­it’s as bad as swearing, I say—­and running to my mistress, to make her read it, and see how the whole world’s against him, and then forbidding her to defile her eyes with a word of it; and so on, till she’s been crying all the morning, poor dear!”

“Why not laughing at him?”

“Poor thing; that’s where it all is:  she’s just as anxious about his poetry as he is, and would write it just as well as he, I’ll warrant, if she hadn’t better things to do; and all her fuss is, that people should ‘appreciate’ him.  He’s always talking about appreciating, till I hate the sound of the word.  How any woman can go on so after a man that behaves as he does! but we’re all soft fools, I’m afraid, Doctor Thurnall.”  And Clara began a languishing look or two across the counter, which made Tom answer to an imaginary Doctor Heale, whom he heard calling from within.

“Yes, Doctor! coming this moment, Doctor!  Good-bye, Miss Clara.  I must hear more next time; you may trust me, you know; secret as the grave, and always your friend, and your lady’s too, if you will allow me to do myself such an honour.  Coming, Doctor!”

And Tom bolted through the glass door, till Miss Clara was safe on her way up the street.

“Very well,” said Tom to himself.  “Knowledge is power:  but how to use it?  To get into Mrs. Vavasour’s confidence, and show an inclination to take her part against her husband?  If she be a true woman, she would order me out of the house on the spot, as surely as a fish-wife would fall tooth and nail on me as a base intruder, if I dared to interfere with her sacred right of being beaten by her husband when she chooses.  No; I must go straight to John Briggs himself, and bind him over to keep the peace; and I think I know the way to do it.”

So Tom pondered over many plans in his head that day; and then went to Trebooze, and saw the sick child, and sat down to dinner, where his host talked loud about the Treboozes of Trebooze, who fought in the Spanish Armada—­or against it; and showed an unbounded belief in the greatness and antiquity of his family, combined with a historic accuracy about equal to that of a good old dame of those parts, who used to say “her family comed over the water, that she knew; but whether it were with the Conqueror, or whether it were wi’ Oliver, she couldn’t exactly say!”