Now, if this young man had failed of one of the triple human combination--weed, and clay, and fire--where and how might he have ended not only that one evening, but all the rest of the evenings of his young life? His appearance and manner had at first imported to any one whom he came across--and he truly did come across them in his wide and loose march out of Oxford city--that he might be sought for in a few hours' time, and only the inferior portion found. His mother worried him, so did his father, so did all humanity, save one--who worried him more than any, or all of it put together. The trees and the road, and the singing of the birds, and the gladness of the green world worried him. Luckily for himself he had bought a good box of German tinder, and from ash to ash his spirit glowed slowly into a more philosophic state. Gradually the beauty of the trees and hedges and the sloping fields began to steal around him; the warbled pleasure of the little birds made overture to his sympathy, and the lustrous calm of shadowed waters spread its picture through his mind.
His body also responded to the influences of the time of day, and the love of nature freshened into the natural love of cupboard. Hunger awoke in his system somewhere, and spread sweet pictures in a tasteful part. For a "moment of supreme agony" he wrestled with the coarse material instinct, then turned on his heel, as our novelists say, and made off for his father's kitchen.
His poor mother caught him the moment he came in, and pulled off his hat and his opera-cloak, and frizzled up his curls for him. She seemed to think that he must have been for a journey of at least a hundred leagues; that the fault of his going was hers, and the virtue of his ever coming back was all his own. Then she looked at him slyly, and with some sadness, and yet a considerable touch of pride, by the light of a three-wicked cocoa-candle; and feeling quite sure that she had him to herself, trembled at the boldness of the shot she made:
"Oh, Kit, why have you never told me? I have found it all out. You have fallen in love!"
Christopher Fermitage Sharp, Esquire--as he always entitled himself, upon the collar of spaniel or terrier--had nothing to say for a moment, but softly withdrew, to have his blush in shadow. Of all the world, best he loved his mother--before, or after, somebody else--and his simple, unpractised, and uncored heart, was shy of the job it was carrying on. Therefore he turned from his mother's face, and her eager eyes, and expectant arms.