He was turning homewards, when he reflected that it would be useless to attempt to go to sleep, and he wandered out into the country towards Piddingfold, pondering over many things. The reaction of that night had been too severe. His ardour was again almost entirely quenched when he saw the men for whom he had worked, and who professed themselves his supporters, filthily drunk. A noble sentence, however, from the _Idler_ came into his mind—his mother had a copy of the _Idler_ in her bedroom, and read and re-read it, and oftentimes quoted it to her husband and her son—“_He that has improved the virtue or advanced the happiness of one fellow-creature . . . may be contented with his own performance_; _and_, _with respect to mortals like himself_, _may demand_, _like Augustus_, _to be dismissed at his departure with applause_.” He reflected that he, an ironmonger’s son, was not born to save the world, and if the great Dr. Johnson could say what he did, with how little ought not a humble Cowfold tradesman to be satisfied! We all of us have too vast a conception of the duty which Providence has imposed upon us; and one great service which modern geology and astronomy have rendered is the abatement of the fever by which earnest people are so often consumed. But George’s meditations all through that night were in the main about his wife, and as soon as he reached his shop in the morning, the first thing he did was to write a note to her telling her to come home. This she did, although her mother and father objected, and George found her there at dinner-time. She looked pale and careworn, but this, of course, was set down to fright. She was unusually quiet, and George forbore to say anything about her father’s behaviour. He dreaded rather to open the subject; he could not tell to what it might lead. Priscilla knew all about George’s repulse from her father’s door, and George could tell she knew it. His father and he had determined that Cowfold would not be a pleasant place for them on the following Sunday, and that business, moreover, demanded their presence in London. Thither, accordingly, they went on the Saturday, as usual; and Priscilla naturally communicating their intention to her mother, Mr. Thomas Broad received an epistle from his father something like one we have already read, but still more imperative in its orders that the dutiful son should see whether the Allens made Zachariah’s house their head-quarters. That they did not sleep there was well-known, but it was believed they had constant intercourse with that unregenerate person, a disciple of Voltaire, as the Reverend John Broad firmly believed, and it would be “advantageous to possess accumulated evidence of the fact.” Priscilla knew that they lodged always at the “George and Blue Boar”; but how they spent their time on Sunday she did not know. There was also a postscript, this time with a new import: