Some pointed and mowed at him, some cursed him for a sneak, and all
shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed
through the village at dusk, "Who was put into the stocks?--baa!" "Who
got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?--baa!" To resist this
species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and
a colder temper than our poor pattern-boy's. He took his resolution at
once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr.
Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on
the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to
the doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red
silk umbrella over his head,--"please, sir, if you'll be good enough to
take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour
night and day; and as for wages, Mother says, 'just suit yourself, sir.'"

"My child," said the doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him
with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo
is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them by and by."

Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the
vacant chair, where he had so long sat in the place of her beloved Mark;
and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to
itself, that she could bear it no longer.

Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny,--perhaps
more so; and one morning she hailed the steward as he was trotting his
hog-maued cob beside the door, and bade him tell the squire that "she
would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice
for the land and premises she held; there were plenty to step into the
place at a much better rent."