than flesh and blood? With a beautiful confidence it put the few
familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then stamped the
bond, and took the fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart that can
permit the irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him
when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so
easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of a
needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping more
readily than the portly; but once through, all are camels alike, the lean
purse an especially big camel. Dispensing tremendous marriage as it
does, the Law can have no conscience.

"I hadn't the slightest difficulty," said the exulting hero.

"Of course not!" returns Mrs. Berry. "It's as easy, if ye're in earnest,
as buying a plum bun."

Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the
Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and there
hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its forces:
which the Church, receiving a wink from the Law, obsequiously engaged to
do, for less than the price of a plum-cake.

Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry, were
toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe slept,--the former
soundly; and one day was as another to them. Regularly every morning a
letter arrived from Richard to his father, containing observations on the
phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on the speeches and acts of
Parliament; and reasons for not having yet been able to call on the
Grandisons. They were certainly rather monotonous and spiritless. The
baronet did not complain. That cold dutiful tone assured him there was