ted that document. "'Lodgings for a lady, and then come
along with Tom. Not a word to a soul.' I say! that looks like--but he
never cared for them. You don't mean to say, Tom, he's been running away
with anybody?"

Tom fell back upon his first reply: "Better wait till ye see Mr. Richard,
sir," and Ripton exclaimed: "Hanged if you ain't the tightest witness I
ever saw! I shouldn't like to have you in a box. Some of you country
fellows beat any number of cockneys. You do!"

Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as
nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering how to perform
his friend's injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady fresh from the
country ought to lodge near the parks, in which direction he told the
cabman to drive. Thus, unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined the
hero, and accepted his character in the New Comedy.

It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do have beneficent
omens to prepare them for their parts when the hero is in full career, so
that they really may be nerved to meet him; ay, and to check him in his
course, had they that signal courage. For instance, Mrs. Elizabeth Berry,
a ripe and wholesome landlady of advertised lodgings, on the borders of
Kensington, noted, as she sat rocking her contemplative person before the
parlour fire this very March afternoon, a supernatural tendency in that
fire to burn all on one side: which signifies that a wedding approaches
the house. Why--who shall say? Omens are as impassable as heroes. It may
be because in these affairs the fire is thought to be all on one side.
Enough that the omen exists, and spoke its solemn warning to the devout
woman. Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was known as a certificated lecturer
against the snares of matrimony. Still that was no reason why she should
not like a wedding. Expectant, therefore, she watched the one glowing
cheek of Hymen, and with pleasing tremours beheld a cab of many boxes
draw up by her bit of garden, and a gentleman emerge from it in the set
of consulting an advertisement paper. The gentleman required lodgings for
a lady. Lodgings for a lady Mrs. Berry could produce, and a very roseate
smile for a gentleman; so much so that Ripton forgot to ask about the
terms, which made the landlady in Mrs. Berry leap up to embrace him as
the happy man. But her experienced woman's eye checked her enthusiasm. He
had not the air of a bridegroom: he did not seem to have a weigh