Meanwhile, Esther Cripps, who perhaps could have thrown some light on this strange affair, was very uneasy in her mind. She had not heard, of course, as yet, that Grace Oglander was missing. But she could not get rid of the fright she had felt, and the dread of some dark secret. Her sister-in-law was in such a condition that she must not be told of it; and as for her brother Exodus, it would be worse than useless to speak to him. He had taken it into his head, ever since that business with the "College gent," that his sister was not "right-minded"--that she dreamed things, and imagined things; and that anything she liked to say should be listened to, and thought no more of. And Baker Cripps was one of those men from whose minds no hydraulic power can lift an idea--laid once, laid for ever. Esther had no one to tell her tale to. She longed to be home at Beckley; but there had been such symptoms with the baker's wife, that a woman, of the largest experience to be found in Oxford, declared that there was another coming. This was not so. But still (as all the women said) it might have been; and where was the man to lay down the law to them that had been through it? The whole of this was made quite right in the end and everybody satisfied; but it prevented poor Esther from going to the Golden Cross, as she should have done; and the Carrier (having a little tiff with his brother about a sack of meal, as long ago as Michaelmas) left him to bake his own bread, and would rather drive over his dinner than dine with him. The days of the week are hard to follow, as everybody must have long found out; but still, from Tuesday to Saturday is a considerable time to think of. Master Cripps had two carrying days, two great days of long voyaging. Not that he refrained from coasting here and there about the parish, or up and down a lane or two, on days of briefer enterprise; or refused to take some washings round; for he was not the man to be ashamed of earning sixpence honourably. But now such weather had set in, that even Cripps, with his active turn and pride in his honest calling, was forced to stay at home and boil the bones the butcher sent him, and nurse his stiff knee, and smoke his pipe, and go no further than his bed of hardy kail, or Dobbin's stable. Except that when the sun went down--if it ever got up, for aught he knew--his social instincts so awoke, that he managed to go to the corner of the lane, where the blacksmith kept the "public-house." This was a most respectable house, frequented very quietly. Master Cripps, from his intercourse with the world, and leading position in Beckley, as well as his pleasant way of letting other people talk, and nodding when their words were wisdom--Cripps had long been accepted as the oracle; and he liked it.