"Nonsense, mother. You'll go to Wendrum, and ride over to Milend in your carriage!"
Mrs. Ogden's face assumed an expression of unfeigned amazement.
"A cayridge! a cayridge! Why, what is th' lad thinkin' about now! I think we shall soon be ridin' into prison. Did ever anybody hear the like?"
There is a curious superstition about carriage-keeping which Mrs. Ogden fully shared. It is thought to be the most extravagant, though the most respectable, way of spending money; and an annual outlay which, if dissipated in eating and drinking, or Continental tours, would excite no remark, is considered extravagance if spent on a comfortable vehicle to drive about in one's own neighborhood. Thus Mrs. Ogden considered her son's proposition as revolutionary—as an act of secession from the simplicity of faith and practice which had been their rule of life and the tradition of their family. In short, it produced much the same effect upon her mind as if the Shayton parson had proposed to buy a gilded dalmatic and chasuble.
"There's folk," said Mrs. Ogden, with the air of an oracle—"there's folk as are foolish when they are young, and grow wiser as they advance in years. But there's other folk that is wise in their youth, to be foolish and extravagant at an age when they ought to know better." She evidently was losing her faith in the prudence of her son Jacob. When they had parted for the night, and Mrs. Ogden got into her bed, the last thing she uttered as she stood with her night-cap on, in her long white night-gown, was the following brief ejaculation:—
"A cayridge! a cayridge! What are we comin' to now!"
But the last thing uncle Jacob thought, as he settled his head on his lonely pillow, was, "It'll be Ogden of Wendrum, J.P."