Now Diggory's mother knew no more about the right way of making the lad into a gentleman than the father; but she began to grow greatly distressed at observing the lad's restlessness and disquietude, for the hours and days went over Diggory's head more heavily the longer he was idle. So she seriously took her husband to task, as they say in Nottinghamshire, about his delay in determining how Dig was to begin to be a gentleman. Her discourse would have rendered the poor man very uneasy, indeed, had not "luck" extricated him from his dilemma on the next day succeeding the curtain lecture. In his new manufacture, Diggory Lawson's father did business with a Londoner: this personage made his quarterly call at the very moment when his customer was so much intent on the great problem as to display much concern in his face. A shrewd question was put: Dig's father told his trouble, and the cockney gave most instantaneous advice how the thing was to be done, as soon as he had been informed of what was so much desired. "The young man must be had out to travel," he said; "_he_ would procure him a 'highly respectable' situation as a genteel commercial traveller for a house in town: _that_ was the way to set him off in the world, and make a real gentleman of him, for he would be thrown into the very best society!" Such was the cockney's advice; and it was sincere, too, for the pert little man really believed there was nothing in the world more "highly respectable" than that morsel of vanity--himself! And then his prate was so fluent, so glib, so high sounding, he was such a walking vocabulary of commercial phrases, that he completely enfevered Dig's father with the persuasion of his cleverness; and the countryman yielded to the advice of the Londoner, believing he had been shown the very best way in the world for beginning to make his son into a gentleman. The lad was, it is true, willing to go, he was so weary of the insipidity of his present idleness, and besides, he wanted to see London, and other parts of the country, never having yet quitted his native shire; but yet his common sense was a little suspicious, that this was _not_ exactly the way to make him a gentleman. Still this suspicion on the part of Diggory was no impediment in the way of a trial--for the lad did not so much wish to be a gentleman as a man--and he thought a little knowledge of the world would not prevent his progress towards that better climax. "Mr. Lawson, the bobbin-net manufacturer," would have had his son fashionably clothed ere he started for town; but the cockney turned up his nose at the very idea. "It was a thing quite out of character," he told Mr. Lawson: "all the country tailors' fits were reckoned only dresses for scarecrows by the best tailors in town: it wouldn't do at all: he was against it, most decidedly!"