’I will struggle.  I will endeavour.  I will speak but little, and, if possible, I will listen much.  Now, my dear, I will write to this man, and you shall give me the address that is proper for him.’  Then he wrote the letter, not accepting a word in the way of dictation from his wife, but ’craving great kindness of a short interview, for which he ventured to become a solicitor, urged thereto by his wife’s assurance that one with whom he was connected by family ties would do as much as this for the possible preservation of the honour of the family.’  In answer to this Mr Toogood wrote back as follows:—­’Dear Mr Crawley, I will be at my office all Thursday morning next from ten to two, and will take care that you shan’t be kept waiting for me above ten minutes.  You parsons never like waiting.  But hadn’t you better come and breakfast with me and Maria at nine?  Then we’d have a talk as we walked to the office.  Yours always, Thomas Toogood.’  And the letter was dated from the attorney’s private house in Tavistock Square.

‘I am sure he means to be kind,’ said Mrs Crawley.

’Doubtless he means to be kind.  But kindness is rough;—­I will not say unmannerly, as the word would be harsh.  I have never even seen the lady whom he calls Maria.’

‘She is his wife!’

’So I would venture to suppose; but she is unknown to me.  I will write again, and thank him, and say that I will be with him at ten to the moment.’

There were still many things to be settled before the journey could be made.  Mr Crawley, in his first plan, proposed that he should go up by night mail train, travelling in the third class, having walked over to Silverbridge to meet it; that he should then walk about London from 5am to 10am, and afterwards come down by an afternoon train to which a third class was also attached.  But at last his wife persuaded him that such a task as that, performed in the middle of winter, would be enough to kill any man, and that, if attempted, it would certainly kill him; and he consented at last to sleep the night in town—­being specially moved thereto by discovering that he could, in conformity with this scheme, get in and out of the train at a station considerably nearer to him than Silverbridge, and that he could get a return-ticket at a third-class fare.  The whole journey, he found, could be done for a pound, allowing him seven shillings for his night’s expenses in London; and out of the resources of the family there were produced two sovereigns, so that in the event of accident he would not utterly be a castaway from want of funds.

So he started on his journey after an early dinner, almost hopeful through the new excitement of a journey to London, and his wife walked with him nearly as far as the station.  ’Do not reject my cousin’s kindness,’ were the last words she spoke.