“Not only from their duty of coming home,” said Michael. “There was our Sam to-day,—’tis a fact,—left the shop while I was half a mile off, and the Taylors’ maid came in for half a pound of currants, and would have gone away again if Morgan had not chanced to pass the inside door and look over the blind at the moment. ’Tis a fact: and Sam had nothing to say but that he heard firing, and the newsmen’s horns blowing like mad, and he went to learn what it was all about.” “I’ll teach him! I’ll make him remember it!” cried Mr. Farrer. “But we want another pair of eyes in the shop, sure enough. ’Tis not often that you and I want to be away at the same time; but——” And the father and son talked over their shop plans, and prepared vengeance for Sam, while Henry told his sister what signs of public rejoicing he had seen this day on his journey;—flags on the steeples, processions of little boys, and evergreen boughs on the stage coaches. The war seemed a very amusing thing to the nation at present. “Stocks are up to-day. The people are in high spirits.” “When people are bent on being in high spirits, anything will do to make them so. We were in high spirits six years ago because a few bad taxes were taken off; and now we are merrier than ever under the necessity of laying on more.” “Come, come, Hal,” said his father, “don’t grudge the people a taste of merriment while they can get it. You will see long faces enough when these new taxes come to be paid. I hope you are not so dead set against the minister as you used to be when younger; or so given to find fault with all that is done.” “So far from being an enemy to the minister, father, I think it is very hard that the nation, or the part of them that makes itself heard by the minister, should be so fond of war as to encourage him to plunge us into it. These very people will not abuse him the less, in the long run, for getting the nation into debt.” “Well, well. We won’t abuse the debt, and loans, and that sort of thing to-day,—eh, Jane!” And Mr. Farrer chuckled, and Michael laughed loudly. “For my part,” continued the old man, “I think the debt is no bad thing for showing what sort of spirits the nation is in. You may depend upon it, Peek, and all other husbands who have wives apt to be high and low, would be very glad of such a thermometer to measure the ladies’ humour by. ’Tis just so, I take it, with Mr. Pitt and the nation. If he wants to know his mistress’s humour, he has only just to learn the state of the stocks.” “Just the same case,” said Michael, laughing. “Not quite,” said Henry. “Peek would rather do without such a thermometer, or barometer, if Patience must ruin herself to pay for it: much more, if she must leave it to her children to pay it after her. I should not have expected, father, to find you speaking up for war and the debt.”