s house for an hour early that
morning, in the hope of being able to entrap Miss Crisp and get her to
take the duty off his hands. But Miss Crisp had been sitting up all
night with the patient and did not appear.

He knocked at the door and asked the servant-girl how Mrs Cruden was.
She was a little better, but very weak and not able to speak to anybody.

"Any news from Liverpool?" inquired Booms. This had become a daily
question among those who inquired at Number 6, Dull Street.

"No, no news," said the girl, with a guilty blush. She knew the reason
why. Reginald's last letter, written just before his arrest, was at
that moment in her pocket.

"Has Mr Horace started to the office?"

"No; he's a-going to wait and see the doctor, and he says I was to ask
you to tell the gentleman so."

"Can I see him?"

"No; he's asleep just now," said the girl.

So Booms had to go down alone to the _Rocket_, as far as ever from
getting the burden of Jemima's secret off his mind.

He had a good mind to pass it on to Waterford, and might have done so,
had not that young gentleman been engaged all the morning on special
duty, which kept him in Mr Granville's room.

Booms grew more and more dispirited and nervous. Every footstep that
came to the door made him tremble, for fear it should be the signal for
the unhappy disclosure. He tried hard to persuade himself it would be
kinder after all to say nothing about it. What good could it do now?

Booms, as the reader knows, had not a very large mind. But what there
was of it was honest, and it told him, try how he would, there was no
getting out of a promise. So he busied himself with concocting
imaginary phrases and letters, by way of experiment as to the neatest
way of breaking his bad news.

Still he dreaded his friend's arrival more and more; and when at last a
brisk footstep halted at the door, he started and turned pale like a
guilty thing, and wished Jemima at the bottom of the sea!

But the footstep was not Horace's. Whoever the arrival was, he tapped
at the door before entering, and then, without waiting for a reply,
walked in.

It was a youth of about seventeen or eighteen, with a bright honest face
and cheery smile.

"Is Horace Cruden here?" he inquired eagerly.

"Oh no," said Booms, in his most doleful accents.

"Isn't this where he works?"

"It is indeed."

"Well, then, is anything wrong? Is he ill?"

"No. _He_ is not ill," said Booms, emphasisi