Nor was the news he brought of a more cheerful nature. John Jackson the shoemaker was nowhere to be found. He had not been heard of since the departure of the train; and John Coss, the other shoemaker, had turned post-boy again, and refused to do any cobbling whatsoever. Coss had told him he got a job to take some gentlefolks in a car over to Carlisle, to meet the train for London, and he was just about to start; and if Jobby liked, he would give him a lift thus far on t’ road to Girt ’Shibition. This was a sad damper for Sandboys, for with John Jackson the shoemaker seemed to vanish his last hope. Postlethwaite had worn out his boots, Jobby had lost his shoes, and John Jackson and John Coss, the only men, within ten miles, who could refit them, were both too fully taken up with the Great Exhibition to trouble their heads about the destitution of Hassness. Postlethwaite almost smiled when he heard the result of Jobby’s twelve-mile walk, and drily remarked to the servant-maid, who already showed strong symptoms of discontent—having herself a sweetheart exposed, without her care, to the temptations and wickedness of London—that the whole family would be soon barefoot, and going about the countryside trying to get one another shod. Sandboys consulted with his wife as to what was to be done, but she administered but little consolation; for the loss of her tea, and the prospect of no Sunday’s dinner, had ruffled her usual equanimity. The sight of her darling boy, too, barefoot and footsore, aroused every passion of her mother’s heart. Jobby had no other shoes to his feet, she told her husband, for the rate at which _that_ boy wore his things out was quite terrible to a mother’s feelings; but Mr. Sandboys had no right to send the lad to such a distance, after such weather as they had just had. He might have known that Jobby was always taking short cuts, and always getting up to his knees in some mess or other; and he must naturally have expected that Jobby would have left both his shoes behind him instead of one—and those the only shoes he had. She should not wonder if Mr. Sandboys had done it for the purpose. Who was to go the errands now, she should like to know? Mr. Sandboys, perhaps, liked living there, in that out of the way hole, like a giant or a hermit. Did he expect that she or Elcy were going to drive that pig to Lorton?—And thus she continued, going over and over again every one of the troubles that their absence from London had brought upon them, until Sandboys was worried into excitement, and plumply demanded of her whether she actually wished to go herself to the Exhibition? Mrs. Sandboys was at no loss for a reply, and retorted, that what she wanted was her usual meals, and shoes for her children; and if she could not get them there, why, she did not care if she had to go to Hyde Park for them.