Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet’s gratification at his son’s demeanour, wherein he noted the calm bearing of experience not gained in the usual wanton way: and will not be without some excited apprehension at his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the train went sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed young man throw himself back in the carriage violently laughing. Science was at a loss to account for that. Sir Austin checked his mind from inquiring, that he might keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it odd, and the jarring sensation that ran along his nerves at the sight, remained with him as he rode home. Lady Blandish’s tender womanly intuition bade her say: “You see it was the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits already.” “It was,” Adrian put in his word, “the exact thing he wanted. His spirits have returned miraculously.” “Something amused him,” said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing train. “Probably something his uncle said or did,” Lady Blandish suggested, and led off at a gallop. Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard’s laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his legs: which unlucky action brought Adrian’s pastoral, “Hippy verteth, Sing cuckoo!” in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized him. “Hippy verteth!” Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed so immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him. “Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy,” said Hippias, and was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest “ha! ha!” “Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?” cried Richard. “I really don’t know,” Hippias chuckled. “Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!” They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias not only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like any blithe creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at him—he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at his own transformation, while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his eyes, now and then, that it might not last, and that he must go underground again, lent him a look of pathos and humour which tickled his youthful companion irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him. “I tell you what, uncle,” said Richard, “I think travelling’s a capital thing.”