"That you have wonderfully changed your tone. Who was to eat any amount
of dirt, if he could but save his influence thereby?"

"I have altered my plans. I shan't stay here long: I shall just see this
cholera over, and then vanish."

"No?"

"Yes. I cannot sit here quietly, listening to the war-news. It makes me
mad to be up and doing. I must eastward-ho, and see if trumps will not
turn up for me at last. Why, I know the whole country, half-a-dozen of
the languages,--oh, if I could get some secret-service work! Go I must.
At worst I can turn my hand to doctoring Bashi-bazouks."

"My dear Tom, when will you settle down like other men?" cries Claude.

"I would now, if there was an opening at Whitbury, and low as life would
be, I'd face it for my father's sake. But here I cannot stay."

Both Claude and Headley saw that Tom had reasons which he did not choose
to reveal. However, Claude was taken into his confidence that very
afternoon.

"I shall make a fool of myself with that schoolmistress. I have been
near enough to it a dozen times already; and this magnificent conduct of
hers about the cholera has given the finishing stroke to my brains. If I
stay on here, I shall marry her: I know I shall! and I won't--I'd go
to-morrow, if it were not that I'm bound, for my own credit, to see the
cholera safe into the town, and out again."