"Oh, I won't trouble you; never you fear. You are doing what you think right, no doubt; and you are welcome to do your worst. Only there is one thing I must say. I know that you are too much of a man, to belie me to your sister, or run me down, behind my back. Shake hands, Jemmy, before I go; perhaps we shall never shake hands again."
"Get somebody to leave you that hundred thousand pounds," said Fox, as he complied with this request; "and then we'll shake hands all day long, instead of shaking fists at each other."
"Jem Crow said to his first wife's mother,
What right have you to be anybody's brother?"
Gilham responded, being in high spirits, with this quotation from that piece of negro doggerel, with which all England was at that time crazed. And thus they parted, with a neutral smile; and none the less perhaps, for that each of them perceived that the parting would prove a long one.
"What will Nicie have to say about all this? I shall not be contented until I know;" said Fox to himself, when his visitor was gone; "I have a great mind to go and get my riding-gaiters. That blessed mother of hers can scarcely growl at me, if I call to-day; considering how long I have been away. I seem to knock under to everybody now. I can't think what has come over me."
When a man begins to think that of himself, it shows that he is getting pugnacious, and has not found his proper outlet. The finest thing for him is a long ride then; or a long walk, if he has only two legs. Fox was shaking down upon his merits, but still a little crusty with himself, and therefore very much so with every one outside it, when his pretty mare pulled up, to think about the water she was bound to walk through at Priestwell.
This is one of the fairest hamlets to be found in England. There are houses enough to make one think of the other people that live in them; but not so many as to make it certain that a great many people will be nasty. You might expect, if you lived there, to know something about everybody in the place; and yet only to lift up your hands, and smile, when they did a thing you were too wise to do. The critical inhabitant in such a place—unless he is very wicked—must be happy. He falls into a habitude of small smiles; "many a mickle makes a muckle"—if that be the right way to quote it, which it isn't—however, the result is all the same, he knows what he is about, and it leads him to smile twenty times, for one smile he would have had in town.
All these things were producing a fine effect upon the character of Dr. Gronow. By head and shoulders, without standing up for himself for a single moment, he was the biggest man at Priestwell; in knowledge of the world, in acquaintance with books, in power to give good advice, and to help the people who took it—the largest. And after the many hot contentions of his life, and the trouble in being understood (where the game never pays for the candle) here he was taken at his own appraisement, after liberal prepayment.
He was not a bad man, take him all in all; though inclined by nature to be many-angled, rather than many-sided. And now, as he stood on the plank that goes over the brook where the road goes under it, he was about as happy as the best of men can be. The old Doctor in truth was as full of delight—though his countenance never expressed it—as the young Doctor was of dejection. And why? For the very noble reason, that the wiser man now had his fly-rod in hand, fly-book in pocket, creel on back, and waterproof boots upon stiff but sturdy legs. And, main point of all—he was just setting forth; his return must be effected perhaps in quite another pair of shoes.