In the morning, Mr. Sandboys, having slept upon his determination of the previous evening, and being several hours nearer to the time which he had fixed for his return to Buttermere, began to think what his neighbours down there would say, when they heard that he and his whole family had been up to London to see the Great Exhibition, and had come away again without ever setting foot in the place. He would be the laughing-stock of the country for miles round; there wouldn’t be a keeping-room far or near but what would have some cock-and-a-bull story or other to tell about them. Besides, why should he deprive the children of the sight? If Fate had decreed _he_ was never to witness it, that was no reason why Elcy and Jobby should be kept away; and after all that dear girl had gone through for him, he was sure she deserved some little return for her goodness. Then again, he knew Jobby, poor boy, was mad to have a peep at the machinery room, which he had heard and read so much about; and it would be something for him to talk about when he got to be an old man, that he had seen the first Exhibition of Industry in this country: besides, the lad was naturally of a mechanical turn of mind; he had spoilt no less than three Dutch clocks out of the kitchen in trying to clean them; and then at making bird-traps and artificial flies for fishing, there wasn’t a boy in the village could come near him. Who could say what effect the Great Exhibition might have on such a mind? And thus Mr. Sandboys continued inwardly framing excuses to himself why they should delay their departure to Buttermere for four-and-twenty hours longer at least. While the preceding train of thoughts had been passing through the mind of the wavering Cursty, a like chain of reasoning had been going on in Mrs. Sandboys’ brain, unknown to her husband. She, too, had been asking herself “how it would look,” when the neighbours came to know that they had never so much as put their heads inside the doors of the very place they had come hundreds of miles to see; and she, like her lord and master, had been persuading herself, that at least, if she chose to keep away, it was her bounden duty to let the “dear” children see the grand sight.