commonly perilous; but Farmer Fleming had the desperation of a man who
has run slightly into debt, and has heard the first din of dunning, which
to the unaccustomed imagination is fearful as bankruptcy (shorn of the
horror of the word). And, moreover, it was so wonderful to find Anthony
displaying humanity at all, that anything might be expected of him.
"Let's see what he will do," thought the farmer in an interval of his
wrath; and the wrath is very new which has none of these cool intervals.
The passions, do but watch them, are all more or less intermittent.

As it chanced, he acted sagaciously, for Anthony at last wrote to say
that his home in London was cheerless, and that he intended to move into
fresh and airier lodgings, where the presence of a discreet young
housekeeper, who might wish to see London, and make acquaintance with the
world, would be agreeable to him. His project was that one of his nieces
should fill this office, and he requested his brother-in-law to reflect
on it, and to think of him as of a friend of the family, now and in the
time to come. Anthony spoke of the seductions of London quite
unctuously. Who could imagine this to be the letter of an old crabbed
miser? "Tell her," he said, "there's fruit at stalls at every
street-corner all the year through--oysters and whelks, if she likes--
winkles, lots of pictures in shops--a sight of muslin and silks, and
rides on omnibuses--bands of all sorts, and now and then we can take a
walk to see the military on horseback, if she's for soldiers." Indeed,
he joked quite comically in speaking of the famous horse-guards--warriors
who sit on their horses to be looked at, and do not mind it, because they
are trained so thoroughly. "Horse-guards blue, and horse-guards red," he
wrote--"the blue only want boiling." There is reason to suppose that his
disrespectful joke was not original in him, but it displayed his
character in a fresh light. Of course, if either of the girls was to go,
Dahlia was the person. The farmer commenced his usual process of sitting