We have seen in a former part of our history, how Tom Grigson's soul revolted from the contamination of trade, which, no doubt, he would have called low, mean, degrading, demoralising, and a dozen other "ings," if he could have readily laid his tongue to them; and which strong aversion nothing but his love for the fair Kate could have induced him to overcome. We have also seen how, after a time, this aversion gradually changed to something like affection; that, at any rate, the golden result of his enforced connection with trade a good deal more than modified his opinions. More than modified! Why, there was not a man within the sound of Bow Bells who could discourse more warmly and eloquently on the dignity of trade and commerce, and of the great advantages they conferred on a country.
"Talk of our being a nation of shopkeepers," said he; "granted, so we are, and it is the shopkeepers that can beat all the world!"
There was no sham about this, either. Tom Grigson believed in himself, and always had done. And here he had the advantage of some shams and humbugs who are to be met with, even in high places sometimes, and of whom you and I, reader, may happen to know or see somewhat occasionally, who do not believe in themselves, and in whom nobody believes. Tom was more like some who are to be met with in this changeable world, who undergo a sort of natural and gradual transformation in the course of their lives.
As, for instance, one who, from being a red-hot Radical in his teens, has subsided in his riper years into a steady-going Conservative, not to say a determined Tory. And so the case might be reversed, or the principle applied to other instances in polemics, or even in habits of everyday life. Conviction sometimes, sometimes experience, necessarily partial in its operation, and oftentimes interest, are the several, or the combined, powers made instrumental in this change of thought.
It was so, at least, with Tom Grigson. He had begun with a silly, ignorant prejudice against trade and tradesmen, and any thing or person connected with these abominations, as he would have termed them. He ended with a prejudice equally absurd against almost all other classes of the community. All honour to Tom; he was, as I have said, sincere. If he had been a farmer, he would have stood up as sincerely for the farming interest; if a lawyer or an artist, he would have exalted the profession he belonged to the skies; if a— But I must rein in my Pegasus.
Much as Tom reined in his, just as he and John got into the road turning out of Richard Grigson's lawn, and high bred and fed Peg (Richard Grigson's blood mare) first of all shied at a heap of stones by the roadside, and would then fairly have bolted with the dog-cart and its passengers, but for the judicious action of the curb for restraint, and of the whip for punishment. This little episode over, and Peg subsiding into a more sober pace, Tom began:
"I want to talk to you about my boy; you have seen something of him during the last month. What do you think of him?"
"Think? He is a fine young fellow," said John, thoughtfully.
"Oh, fine! Ah yes; that is to say, he stands five feet eight in his stockings already, and will mount up to six feet, I daresay, before he has done growing. Fine! Well, he is something like me in figure and face, they say, with his mother's dark eyes and arched eyebrows superadded; so he must be fine, I suppose." Tom said this half-jokingly, but rather proudly also, no doubt; and then he added—
"But I wasn't thinking of this; it isn't what I meant. What about his mental fit-out? You have had some talk with him, you know."