night, the nine o'clock stage
had come round, to know whether there was anybody going to town, as, in
that case, he (the nine o'clock) had room for one inside.

Mr. Minns started up; and, despite countless exclamations of surprise,
and entreaties to stay, persisted in his determination to accept the
vacant place. But, the brown silk umbrella was nowhere to be found; and
as the coachman couldn't wait, he drove back to the Swan, leaving word
for Mr. Minns to 'run round' and catch him. However, as it did not occur
to Mr. Minns for some ten minutes or so, that he had left the brown silk
umbrella with the ivory handle in the other coach, coming down; and,
moreover, as he was by no means remarkable for speed, it is no matter of
surprise that when he accomplished the feat of 'running round' to the
Swan, the coach--the last coach--had gone without him.

It was somewhere about three o'clock in the morning, when Mr. Augustus
Minns knocked feebly at the street-door of his lodgings in
Tavistock-street, cold, wet, cross, and miserable. He made his will next
morning, and his professional man informs us, in that strict confidence
in which we inform the public, that neither the name of Mr. Octavius
Budden, nor of Mrs. Amelia Budden, nor of Master Alexander Augustus
Budden, appears therein.

CHAPTER III--SENTIMENT

The Miss Crumptons, or to quote the authority of the inscription on the
garden-gate of Minerva House, Hammersmith, 'The Misses Crumpton,' were
two unusually tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny personages:
very upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to
thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty; an
admission which was rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident
fact of her being at least fifty. They dressed in the most interesting
manner--like twins! and looked as happy and comfortable as a couple of
marigolds run to seed. They were very precise, had the strictest
possible ideas of propriety, wore false hair, and always smelt very
strongly of lavender.

Minerva House, conducted under the auspices of the two sisters, was a
'finishing establishment for young ladies,' where some twenty girls of
the ages of from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of
everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in French and
Italian, dancing lessons twice a-week; and other necessaries of life.
The house was a white one, a little removed from the roadside,