I can't starve, and if I
want more it may be amusing to work for it. Pray don't send after me,
or institute inquiries, or disturb the household and set all the
neighbourhood talking, by any mention either of my project or of your
surprise at it. I will not fail to write to you from time to time.
You will judge best what to say to my dear mother. If you tell her the
truth, which of course I should do did I tell her anything, my request
is virtually frustrated, and I shall be the talk of the county. You,
I know, don't think telling fibs is immoral when it happens to be
convenient, as it would be in this case.

I expect to be absent a year or eighteen months; if I prolong my travels
it shall be in the way you proposed. I will then take my place in polite
society, call upon you to pay all expenses, and fib on my own account
to any extent required by that world of fiction which is peopled by
illusions and governed by shams.

Heaven bless you, my dear Father, and be quite sure that if I get into
any trouble requiring a friend, it is to you I shall turn. As yet I have
no other friend on earth, and with prudence and good luck I may escape
the infliction of any other friend.

Yours ever affectionately,

KENELM.

P. S.--Dear Father, I open my letter in your library to say again "Bless
you," and to tell you how fondly I kissed your old beaver gloves, which
I found on the table.

When Sir Peter came to that postscript he took off his spectacles and
wiped them: they were very moist.

Then he fell into a profound meditation. Sir Peter was, as I have said,
a learned man; he was also in some things a sensible man, and he had a
strong sympathy with the humorous side of his son's crotchety character.
What was to be said to Lady Chillingly? That matron was quite guiltless
of any crime which should deprive her of a husband's confidence in
a matter relating to her only son. She was a virtuous matron; morals
irreproachable, manners dignified, and _she-baronety_. Any one seeing
her for the first time would intuitively say, "Your ladyship." Was
this a matron to be suppressed in any well-ordered domestic circle? Sir
Peter's conscience loudly answered, "No;" but when, putting conscience
into his pocket, he regarded the question at issue as a man of the
world, Sir Peter felt that to communicate the contents of his son's
letter to Lady Chillingly would be the foolishest thing he could
possibly do. Did she know that Kenelm had a