"Why, what in the world, then, could it be," you will ask, "that caused old Davy to look upon a lad, with his son's commendations, in the light of disparagement?" If the truth must be told, we must begin at the beginning. Young Davy showed sundry symptoms of a disposition that his father did not like, even when a child: he would hook the gears one day in one mode and another day in another, often to the provocation of some such harsh exclamation on the part of the senior Lidgitt, as—"'Od rabbet thee! thou'st been at thy kickshaw tricks again, with the old mare's belly-band: she'll be kicking thy busy brains out some of these days!" And many a kick, to say troth, young Davy received for these "kickshaw" tricks: but he persevered, with the belief that the way of harnessing a cart-horse might be improved. Yet his father could never discern that either in this or any other of his displays of genius, such as clipping or tying the manes of the horses in whimsical forms, or hanging their collars, and halters, and so forth, in "apple-pie order," as the old man called it, in the home stable—I say, old Davy could never arrive at the conclusion that young Davy, in any of these intended "improvements" ever effected a real one. "But, Lord love thee, Davy!" Betty Lidgitt would usually say, when her spouse had been relating his boy's latest whim, in her ears, at supper-time,—"Lord love thee, Davy, he's only a child; and thou knaws childer will be childer: one can't set old heads upo' young shouthers: he'll give over with his meagrims when he grows older: thou wants patientness, Davy,—patientness! Thou knaws I tell'd thee so, before we were married!" These pleasant motherly excuses for the lad quieted the father for some years; but, one day, when the young "Reformer" had proceeded so far as to take away the horse-shoe from the door-jamb,—that mystic surety of good luck to the cottage by the opinions of every inhabitant of Long Ludforth, and which the parson had never said was wrong,—old Davy could forbear no longer to put into execution a resolve that had been for some months forming in his mind. "Betty! I'll take him to Wise Tom, and have his planet ruled!" said he, "for I feel sartain and sewer some'at isn't right about the lad: he's the very devil for mischief! Lord ha' marcy on us, if the young varment hasn't tucken the horse-shoe away now! some'at will be happening us I'm sewer!" And, on the following Monday morning, when his team had rested a day after their usual Saturday's travel, old Davy Lidgitt arose betimes, and, calling up his son, set forth with him on the way to Welton, to visit the astrologer.