When I got back to my woodland hermitage--which I regained, as I had foreseen I should, without my absence from the house having excited any comment--I put up, in a little frenzy of mockery, an altar to the God of Luck. I drew a picture of a clergyman (Mr Pugsley it was meant for) christening a baby out of a pint pot, and turning to demand of a villainous old pew-opener (my imaginary presentment of Mother Carey), who stood beside, the infant’s proposed title. The question, within a scroll, issued from his lips, and the answer--“Richard Gaskett, godson of the publican of that name”--from hers. I had bought in Footover, on my way back, a bottle of gin and one of peppermint essence; and these I clasped round with a single label bearing the motto “In vino veritas,” and stood them on a little table underneath the drawing, which I nailed to the wall. No one but Miss Christmas--barring my stepfather on a rare occasion--had ever invaded, or was like to invade, my snuggery; and, if anyone did, I was reckless about consequences. Then I sat down to consider, over a pipe, my present position and gains. These amounted to something at least. The discovery that my mother, and my mother’s mother (I could hardly bring myself to acknowledge the old bibulous harpy for my grandmother) had both been on the stage; the discovery that their name was Carey; the discovery that the elder had “come into money”--been pensioned off, belike, by Lord Skene--and that the younger had “found religion” at the hands of Mr Pugsley of the tin tabernacle--all these little enlightenments and confirmations made a certain definite “grounding,” on which I might hope to embroider that web which should catch Lady Skene’s feet tripping. True, the main object of my venture was not realised. Yet even there Luck was shaping me out a promise. An usher at the Grammar School!--that villain who had taken base advantage of a poor ingénue’s warmth over his reformation! It was as much in reason as anything else. That a pedagogue _could_ be something less than immaculate, quote Eugene Aram, not to speak of the Stockwell schoolmaster who chopped up his wife and put her in a box. But, whether it were a pedagogue or his pupil, a learned Theban or a scented puppy, I was confident that time, served by cunning and caution, would betray him to me soon or late. I had learned much already; and knowledge is always an investment which pays itself automatically at compound interest.