With this valorous resolution, which he maintained, although his horse, from constant habit, turned his head down the avenue of Woodbourne, and although he himself passed the lodge twice every day, Charles Hazlewood withstood a strong inclination to ride down, just to ask how the young ladies were, and whether he could be of any service to them during Colonel Mannering's absence. But on the second occasion he felt the temptation so severe, that he resolved not to expose himself to it a third time; and, contenting himself with sending hopes and inquiries, and so forth, to Woodbourne, he resolved to make a visit long promised to a family at some distance, and to return in such time as to be one of the earliest among Mannering's visitors, who should congratulate his safe arrival from his distant and hazardous expedition to Edinburgh. Accordingly, he made out his visit, and having arranged matters so as to be informed within a few hours after Colonel Mannering reached home, he finally resolved to take leave of the friends with whom he had spent the intervening time, with the intention of dining at Woodbourne, where he was in a great measure domesticated; and this (for he thought much more deeply on the subject than was necessary) would, he flattered himself, appear a simple, natural, and easy mode of conducting himself. Fate, however, of which lovers make so many complaints, was, in this case, unfavourable to Charles Hazlewood. His horse's shoes required an alteration, in consequence of the fresh weather having decidedly commenced. The lady of the house, where he was a visitor, chose to indulge in her own room till a very late breakfast hour. His friend also insisted on showing him a litter of puppies, which his favourite pointer bitch had produced that morning. The colours had occasioned some doubts about the paternity, a weighty question of legitimacy, to the decision of which Hazlewood's opinion was called in as arbiter between his friend and his groom, and which inferred in its consequences, which of the litter should be drowned, which saved. Besides, the Laird himself delayed our young lover's departure for a considerable time, endeavouring, with long and superfluous rhetoric, to insinuate to Sir Robert Hazlewood, through the medium of his son, his own particular ideas respecting the line of a meditated turnpike road. It is greatly to the shame of our young lover's apprehension, that after the tenth reiterated account of the matter, he could not see the advantage to be obtained by the proposed road passing over the Lang-hirst, Windyknowe, the Goodhouse-park, Hailziecroft, and then crossing the river at Simon's Pool, and so by the road to Kippletringan; and the less eligible line pointed out by the English surveyor, which would go clear through the main enclosures at Hazlewood, and cut within a mile, or nearly so, of the house itself, destroying the privacy and pleasure, as his informer contended, of the grounds.