now in his twenty-first year, at home, pretending that nothing
should make him go back to Oxford, and enjoying more than ever the
sport of plaguing his mother. A soul-doctor might have prescribed for
him a course of small-pox, to be followed by intermittent fever, with
nobody to wait upon him but Mrs. Gamp: after that, his mother might
have had a possible chance with him, and he with his mother. But,
unhappily, he had the best of health--supreme blessing in the eyes of
the fool whom it enables to be a worse fool still; and was altogether
the true son of his mother, who consoled herself for her absolute
failure in his moral education with the reflection that she had reared
him sound in wind and limb. Plaguing his mother, amusing himself as
best he could, riding about the country on a good mare, of which he was
proud, he was living in utter idleness, affording occasion for much
wonder that he had never yet disgraced himself. He talked to everybody
who would talk to him, and made acquaintance with anybody on the spur
of the moment's whim. He would sit on a log with a gypsy, and bamboozle
him with lies made for the purpose, then thrash him for not believing
them. He called here and called there, made himself specially agreeable
everywhere, went to every ball and evening party to which he could get
admittance in the neighborhood, and flirted with any girl who would let
him. He meant no harm, neither had done much, and was imagined by most
incapable of doing any. The strange thing to some was that he staid on
in the country, and did not go to London and run up bills for his
mother to pay; but the mare accounted for a good deal; and the fact
that almost immediately on his late return he had seen Letty and fallen
in love with her at first sight, accounted for a good deal more. Not
since then, however, had he yet been able to meet her so as only to
speak to her; for Thornwick was one of the few houses of the middle
class in the neighborhood where he was not encouraged to show himself.
He was constantly, therefore, on the watch for a chance of seeing her,
and every Sunday went to church in that same hope and no other. But
Letty knew nothing of the favor in which she stood with him; for,
although Tom had, as we have heard, confessed to her friend Mary
Marston his admiration of her, Mary had far too much good sense to make
herself his ally in the matter.

CHAPTER VII.

DURNMELLING.

In the autumn, Mr. Mortimer of Durnme