On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had despatched no tidings whatever.  Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening after evening, vastly disturbed.  London was a large place—­young Tom might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses.  A wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London, as yokels have proved.  But what had become of Lucy?  This consideration almost sent Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his pipe enlightened him.  A young fellow might play truant and get into a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of, unless they were acting in complicity.  Why, of course, young Tom had behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while he had the chance.  It was a long guess.  Still it was the only reasonable way of accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the farmer held to it that he had done the deed.  He argued as modern men do who think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from us.  So, after despatching a letter to a friend in town to be on the outlook for son Tom, he continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather elated than not, and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when Master Honeymoon did appear.

Toward the middle of the second week of Richard’s absence, Tom Bakewell came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum.  The Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter in return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep the heroic engine in motion at a moderate pace.  Tom went back, and Raynham and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of the morrow.  The System, wedded to Time, slept, and knew not how he had been outraged—­anticipated by seven pregnant seasons.  For Time had heard the hero swear to that legalizing instrument, and had also registered an oath.  Ah me! venerable Hebrew Time! he is unforgiving.  Half the confusion and fever of the world comes of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once done him a wrong.  They cannot escape him.  They will never outlive it.  The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business of men to discover.

The days roll round.  He is their servant now.  Mrs. Berry has a new satin gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves, presented to her by the hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the altar to-morrow; and, instead of being an old wary hen, she is as much a chicken as any of the party, such has been the magic of these articles.  Fathers she sees accepting the facts produced for them by their children; a world content to be carved out as it pleases the hero.