John groaned when he heard this last word. He knew very well what his
mother meant. He should buy three hunters, he should marry. These were
the anodynes that were offered to him in and out of season. "Bad enough
that I should exist! Why precipitate another into the gulf of being?"
"Consort with men whose ideal hovers between a stable boy and a
veterinary surgeon;" and then, amused by the paradox, John, to whom the
chase was evocative of forests, pageantry, spears, would quote some
stirring verses of an old ballad, and allude to certain pictures by
Rubens, Wouvermans, and Snyders. "Why do you talk in that way?" "Why do
you seek to make yourself ridiculous?" Mrs Norton would retort.

Smiling just a little sorrowfully, John would withdraw, and on the
following day he would leave for Stanton College. And it was thus that
Mrs Norton's temper scarred with deep wounds a nature so pale and
delicate, so exposed that it seemed as if wanting an outer skin; and as
Thornby Place appeared to him little more than a comprehensive symbol
of what he held mean, even obscene in life, his visits had grown shorter
and fewer, until now his absence extended to the verge of the second
year, and besieged by the belief that he was contemplating priesthood,
Mrs Norton had written to her old friend, saying that she wanted to
speak to him on matters of great importance. Now maturing her plans for
getting her boy back, she stood by the bare black mantel-piece, her head
leaning on her hand. She uttered an exclamation when Mr Hare entered.

"What," she said, "you haven't changed your things, and I told you you
would find a suit of John's clothes. I must insist--"

"My dear Lizzie, no amount of insistance would get me into a pair of
John's trousers. I am thirteen stone and a half, and he is not much over