"If Mr Belfield's home-visits are so periodical," said Cecilia, "it must be rather less, than more, difficult to meet with him."
"Why you know, ma'am," answered Mrs Belfield, "to-day is a red-letter day, so that's the reason of it."
"A red-letter day?"
"Good lack, madam, why have not you heard that my son is turned book- keeper?"
Cecilia, much surprised, looked at Belfield, who, colouring very high, and apparently much provoked by his mother's loquacity, said, "Had Miss Beverley not heard it even now, madam, I should probably have lost with her no credit."
"You can surely lose none, Sir," answered Cecilia, "by an employment too little pleasant to have been undertaken from any but the most laudable motives."
"It is not, madam, the employment," said he, "for which I so much blush as for the person employed--for myself! In the beginning of the winter you left me just engaged in another business, a business with which I was madly delighted, and fully persuaded I should be enchanted for ever;--now, again, in the beginning of the summer,--you find me, already, in a new occupation!"
"I am sorry," said Cecilia, "but far indeed from surprised, that you found yourself deceived by such sanguine expectations."
"Deceived!" cried he, with energy, "I was bewitched, I was infatuated! common sense was estranged by the seduction of a chimera; my understanding was in a ferment from the ebullition of my imagination! But when this new way of life lost its novelty,--novelty! that short- liv'd, but exquisite bliss! no sooner caught than it vanishes, no sooner tasted than it is gone! which charms but to fly, and comes but to destroy what it leaves behind!--when that was lost, reason, cool, heartless reason, took its place, and teaching me to wonder at the frenzy of my folly, brought me back to the tameness--the sadness of reality!"
"I am sure," cried Mrs Belfield, "whatever it has brought you back to, it has brought you back to no good! it's a hard case, you must needs think, madam, to a mother, to see a son that might do whatever he would, if he'd only set about it, contenting himself with doing nothing but scribble and scribe one day, and when he gets tired of that, thinking of nothing better than casting up two and two!"
"Why, madam," said Mr Hobson, "what I have seen of the world is this; there's nothing methodizes a man but business. If he's never so much upon the stilts, that's always a sure way to bring him down, by reason he soon finds there's nothing to be got by rhodomontading. Let every man be his own carver; but what I say is, them gentlemen that are what one may call geniuses, commonly think nothing of the main chance, till they get a tap on the shoulder with a writ; and a solid lad, that knows three times five is fifteen, will get the better of them in the long run. But as to arguing with gentlemen of that sort, where's the good of it? You can never bring them to the point, say what you will; all you can get from them, is a farrago of fine words, that you can't understand without a dictionary."