“Good gracious! why, these poets want as tender handling as a bag of gunpowder over the fire.”

“You speak like a book there in your turn.”  And Tom went home to his father.

He returned in due time.  A new difficulty had arisen.  Elsley, under the excitement of expectation, had gone out and deigned to buy laudanum—­so will an unhealthy craving degrade a man!—­of old Bolus himself, who luckily did not recognise him.  He had taken his fullest dose, and was now unable to go anywhere or do anything.  Tom did not disturb him:  but went away, sorely perplexed, and very much minded to tell a white lie to Armsworth, in whose eyes this would be an offence—­not unpardonable, for nothing with him was unpardonable, save lying or cruelty—­but very grievous.  If a man had drunk too much wine in his house, he would have simply kept his eye on him afterwards, as a fool who did not know when he had his “quotum;” but laudanum drinking,—­involving, too, the breaking of an engagement, which, well managed, might have been of immense use to Elsley,—­was a very different matter.  So Tom knew not what to say or do; and not knowing, determined to wait on Providence, smartened himself as best he could, went up to the great house, and found Miss Mary.

“I’ll tell her.  She will manage it somehow, if she is a woman; much more if she is an angel, as my father says.”

Mary looked very much shocked and grieved; answered hardly a word; but said at last, “Come in, while I go and see my father.”  He came into the smart drawing-room, which he could see was seldom used; for Mary lived in her own room, her father in his counting-house, or in his “den.”  In ten minutes she came down.  Tom thought she had been crying.

“I have settled it.  Poor unhappy man!  We will talk of something more pleasant.  Tell me about your shipwreck, and that place,—­Aberalva, is it not?  What a pretty name!”

Tom told her, wondering then, and wondering long afterwards, how she had “settled it” with her father.  She chatted on artlessly enough, till the old man came in, and to dinner, in capital humour, without saying one word of Elsley.

“How has the old lion been tamed?” thought Tom.  “The two greatest affronts you could offer him in old times were, to break an engagement, and to despise his good cheer.”  He did not know what the quiet oil on the waters of such a spirit as Mary’s can effect.

The evening passed pleasantly enough till nine, in chatting over old times, and listening to the history of every extraordinary trout and fox which had been killed within twenty miles, when the footboy entered with a somewhat scared face.

“Please, sir, is Mr. Vavasour here?”

“Here?  Who wants him?”

“Mrs. Brown, sir, in Hemmelford Street.  Says he lodges with her, and has been to seek for him at Dr. Thurnall’s.”

“I think you had better go, Mr. Thurnall,” said Mary, quietly.