He was now in his twenty-first year, at home, pretending that
nothing should make him go back to Oxford, and enjoying more than
ever the sport of plaguing his mother. A soul-doctor might have
prescribed for him a course of small-pox, to be followed by
intermittent fever, with nobody to wait upon him but Mrs. Gamp:
after that, his mother might have had a possible chance with him,
and he with his mother. But, unhappily, he had the best of
health--supreme blessing in the eyes of the fool whom it enables
to be a worse fool still; and was altogether the true son of his
mother, who consoled herself for her absolute failure in his
moral education with the reflection that she had reared him sound
in wind and limb. Plaguing his mother, amusing himself as best he
could, riding about the country on a good mare, of which he was
proud, he was living in utter idleness, affording occasion for
much wonder that he had never yet disgraced himself. He talked to
everybody who would talk to him, and made acquaintance with
anybody on the spur of the moment's whim. He would sit on a log
with a gypsy, and bamboozle him with lies made for the purpose,
then thrash him for not believing them. He called here and called
there, made himself specially agreeable everywhere, went to every
ball and evening party to which he could get admittance in the
neighborhood, and flirted with any girl who would let him.
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