MY father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother
into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty
or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze
himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he
said might every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him
more than every thing else was, the provoking time of the year,—which,
as I told you, was towards the end of _September_, when his wall-fruit
and green gages especially, in which he was very curious, were just
ready for pulling:——“Had he been whistled up to _London_, upon a _Tom
Fool_’s errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not
have said three words about it.”
For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy
blow he had sustain’d from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had
fully reckon’d upon in his mind, and register’d down in his
pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case _Bobby_ should
fail him. “The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a
wise man, than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put
together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,——he did not mind it a
rush.”
From _Stilton_, all the way to _Grantham_, nothing in the whole affair
provoked him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish
figure they should both make at church, the first _Sunday_;——of which,
in the satirical vehemence of his wit, now sharpen’d a little by
vexation, he would give so many humorous and provoking
descriptions,—and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights
and attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;—that my mother
declared, these two stages were so truly tragi-comical, that she did
nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one end to the other of
them all the way.
From _Grantham_, till they had cross’d the _Trent_, my father was out
of all kind of patience at the vile trick and imposition which he
fancied my mother had put upon him in this affair—“Certainly,” he would
say to himself, over and over again, “the woman could not be deceived
herself——if she could,——“what weakness!”—tormenting word!—which led his
imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play’d the duce
and all with him;——for sure as ever the word _weakness_ was uttered,
and struck full upon his brain—so sure it set him upon running
divisions upon how many kinds of weaknesses there were;——that there was
such a thing as weakness of the body,——as well as weakness of the
mind,—and then he would do nothing but syllogize within himself for a
stage or two together, How far the cause of all these vexations might,
or might not, have arisen out of himself.
In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out
of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose
up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an
uneasy journey of it down.——In a word, as she complained to my uncle
_Toby_, he would have tired out the patience of any flesh alive.