“My influence?”

“Yes; only keep him steady, and he may grow up a magnificent man.  If not—­you will excuse me—­but you must not let him live as freely as his father; the constitutions of the two are very different.”

“Don’t talk so, sir.  Steady?  His father makes him drunk now, if he can; teaches him to swear, because it is manly—­God help him and me!”

Tom’s cunning and yet kind shaft had sped.  He guessed that with a coarse woman like Mrs. Trebooze his best plan was to come as straight to the point as he could; and he was right.  Ere half an hour was over, that woman had few secrets on earth which Tom did not know.

“Let me give you one hint before I go,” said he at last.  “Persuade your husband to go into a militia regiment.”

“Why?  He would see so much company, and it would be so expensive.”

“The expense would repay itself ten times over.  The company which he would see would be sober company, in which he would be forced to keep in order.  He would have something to do in the world; and he’d do it well.  He is just cut out for a soldier, and might have made a gallant one by now, if he had had other men’s chances.  He will find he does his militia work well; and it will be a new interest, and a new pride, and a new life to him.  And meanwhile, madam, what you have said to me is sacred.  I do not pretend to advise or interfere.  Only tell me if I can be of use—­how, when, and where—­and command me as your servant.”

And Tom departed, having struck another root; and was up at four the next morning (he never worked at night; for, he said, he never could trust after-dinner brains), drawing out a detailed report of the Pentremochyn cottages, which he sent to Lord Minchampstead with—­

“And your lordship will excuse my saying, that to put the cottages into the state in which your lordship, with your known wish for progress of all kinds, would wish to see them is a responsibility which I dare not take on myself, as it would involve a present outlay of not less than L450.  This sum would be certainly repaid to your Lordship and your tenants, in the course of the next three years, by the saving in poor-rates; an opinion for which I subjoin my grounds drawn from the books of the medical officer, Mr. Heale:  but the responsibility and possible unpopularity, which employing so great a sum would involve, is more than I can, in the present dependent condition of poor-law medical officers, dare to undertake, in justice to Mr. Heale my employer, save at your special command.  I am bound, however, to inform your lordship, that this outlay would, I think, perfectly defend the hamlets, not only from that visit of the cholera which we have every reason to expect next summer, but also from those zymotic diseases which (as your lordship will see by my returns) make up more than sixty-five per cent of the aggregate sickness of the estate.”

Which letter the old Cotton Lord put in his pocket, rode into Whitbury therewith, and showed it to Mark Armsworth.