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.

At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor.  The final arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and Mrs. Berry lights the little bride to her bed.  Lucy stops on the landing where there is an old clock eccentrically correct that night.  ’Tis the palpitating pause before the gates of her transfiguration.  Mrs. Berry sees her put her rosy finger on the One about to strike, and touch all the hours successively till she comes to the Twelve that shall sound “Wife” in her ears on the morrow, moving her lips the while, and looking round archly solemn when she has done; and that sight so catches at Mrs. Berry’s heart that, not guessing Time to be the poor child’s enemy, she endangers her candle by folding Lucy warmly in her arms, whimpering; “Bless you for a darling! you innocent lamb!  You shall be happy!  You shall!”

Old Time gazes grimly ahead.

CHAPTER XXIX