The unknown has always enough of terror about it without the dark forebodings of an evil prophet.
"I like Maitland's project better," said Tony, after a long night's reflection. "At all events, it's the sort of thing to suit _me_. If I should come to grief, it will be a sad day for poor mother; but the same might happen to me when carrying a despatch-bag. I think he ought to have been more explicit, and let me hear for whom I am to fight, though, perhaps, it does n't much signify. I could fight for any one but Yankees! I think I 'll say 'done.' This Maitland is a great 'Don;' has, apparently, fortune and station. It can't be a mistake to sail in the same boat with _him_. I'll certainly say 'done.'" With this resolve he jumped out of bed, and wrote the following brief note:--
"Dear Sir,--I'll not take the three days you gave me to consider your offer; I accept it at once.--Yours truly,
"I'll have to write to Skeffy," said he to himself, "and say you may tell my noble patron that I don't want the messengership, and that when next I call at the Office I 'll kick Willis for nothing. I don't suppose that this is the formal way of resigning; but I take it they 'll not be sorry to be quit of me, and it will spare the two old coves in white cravats all the trouble of having me plucked at the examination. Poor Skeffy won't be pleased, though; he was to have 'coached me' in foreign tongues and the Rule of Three. Well, I 'm glad I 'm in for a line of life where nobody asks about Colenso's Arithmetic, nor has so much as heard of Ollendorff's Method. Oh dear! how much happier the world must have been when people weren't so confoundedly well informed!--so awfully brimful of all knowledge as they now are! In those pleasant days, instead of being a black sheep, I 'd have been pretty much like the rest of the flock."
The speculations on this topic--this golden age of ignorance and bliss--occupied him all the way, as he walked over the hills to leave his letter at the gate-lodge for Mr. Maitland.
Resisting all the lodge-keeper's inducements to talk,--for he was an old friend of Tony's, and wanted much to know where he had been and what doing of late, and why he was n't up at the Abbey every day as of yore,--Tony refused to hear of all the sad consequences that had followed on his absence; how the "two three-year-olds had gone back in their training;" how "Piper wouldn't let a saddle be put on his back;" how the carp were all dying in the new pond, nobody knew why,--there was even something gone wrong with the sun-dial over the stable, as though the sun himself had taken his departure in dudgeon, and would n't look straight on the spot since. These were, with many more, shouted after him as he turned away, while he, laughing, called out, "It will be all right in a day or two, Mat. I 'll see to everything soon."