"I can't think of anything but old Bolus's boy turned poet. Why did you tell me, Tom, you bad fellow? It's too much for a man at my time of life, and after his dinner too."
And with that he opened the little gate by the side of the grand one, and turned to ask Tom—
"Won't come in, boy, and have one more cigar?"
"I promised my father to be back as quickly as possible."
"Good lad—that's the plan to go on—
'You'll be churchwarden before all's over,
And so arrive at wealth and fame.'
Instead of writing po-o-o-etry? Do you recollect that morning, and the black draught? Oh dear, my side!"
And Tom heard him keckling to himself up the garden walk to his house; went off to see that Elsley was safe; and then home, and slept like a top; no wonder, for he would have done so the night before his execution.
And what was little Mary doing all the while?
She had gone up to the room, after telling her father, with a kiss, not to forget to say his prayers. And then she fed her canary bird, and made up the Persian cat's bed; and then sat long at the open window, gazing out over the shadow-dappled lawn, away to the poplars sleeping in the moonlight, and the shining silent stream, and the shining silent stars, till she seemed to become as one of them, and a quiet heaven within her eyes took counsel with the quiet heaven above. And then she drew in suddenly, as if stung by some random thought, and shut the window. A picture hung over her mantelpiece—a portrait of her mother, who had been a country beauty in her time. She glanced at it, and then at the looking-glass. Would she have given her fifty thousand pounds to have exchanged her face for such a face as that?