ning to the high road, before you are out
of bed; and catch the day-coach, going up. Good-bye!'

'You are in a hurry!'

'I have something to do,' said Jonas. 'Good-bye!'

His friend looked after him as he went out, in surprise, which gradually
gave place to an air of satisfaction and relief.

'It happens all the better. It brings about what I wanted, without any
difficulty. I shall travel home alone.'

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

IN WHICH TOM PINCH AND HIS SISTER TAKE A LITTLE PLEASURE; BUT QUITE IN A
DOMESTIC WAY, AND WITH NO CEREMONY ABOUT IT

Tom Pinch and his sister having to part, for the dispatch of the
morning's business, immediately after the dispersion of the other actors
in the scene upon the wharf with which the reader has been already made
acquainted, had no opportunity of discussing the subject at that time.
But Tom, in his solitary office, and Ruth, in the triangular parlour,
thought about nothing else all day; and, when their hour of meeting in
the afternoon approached, they were very full of it, to be sure.

There was a little plot between them, that Tom should always come out
of the Temple by one way; and that was past the fountain. Coming through
Fountain Court, he was just to glance down the steps leading into Garden
Court, and to look once all round him; and if Ruth had come to meet him,
there he would see her; not sauntering, you understand (on account of
the clerks), but coming briskly up, with the best little laugh upon her
face that ever played in opposition to the fountain, and beat it all to
nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom had been looking for her in the wrong
direction, and had quite given her up, while she had been tripping
towards him from the first; jingling that little reticule of hers (with
all the keys in it) to attract his wandering observation.

Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain
Court for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest
and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question for
gardeners, and those who are learned in the loves of plants. But, that
it was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a delicate
little figure flitting through it; that it passed like a smile from the
grimy old houses, and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker,
sterner than before; there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain
might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful
maidenhood, that in her