pitched the show in a convenient
spot, and the spectators were soon in the very triumph of the scene.
The child, sitting down with the old man close behind it, had been
thinking how strange it was that horses who were such fine honest
creatures should seem to make vagabonds of all the men they drew about
them, when a loud laugh at some extemporaneous witticism of Mr Short's,
having allusion to the circumstances of the day, roused her from her
meditation and caused her to look around.

If they were ever to get away unseen, that was the very moment. Short
was plying the quarter-staves vigorously and knocking the characters in
the fury of the combat against the sides of the show, the people were
looking on with laughing faces, and Mr Codlin had relaxed into a grim
smile as his roving eye detected hands going into waistcoat pockets and
groping secretly for sixpences. If they were ever to get away unseen,
that was the very moment. They seized it, and fled.

They made a path through booths and carriages and throngs of people,
and never once stopped to look behind. The bell was ringing and the
course was cleared by the time they reached the ropes, but they dashed
across it insensible to the shouts and screeching that assailed them
for breaking in upon its sanctity, and creeping under the brow of the
hill at a quick pace, made for the open fields.

CHAPTER 20

Day after day as he bent his steps homeward, returning from some new
effort to procure employment, Kit raised his eyes to the window of the
little room he had so much commended to the child, and hoped to see
some indication of her presence. His own earnest wish, coupled with
the assurance he had received from Quilp, filled him with the belief
that she would yet arrive to claim the humble shelter he had offered,
and from the death of each day's hope another hope sprung up to live
to-morrow.

'I think they must certainly come to-morrow, eh mother?' said Kit,
laying aside his hat with a weary air and sighing as he spoke. 'They
have been gone a week. They surely couldn't stop away more than a
week, could they now?'

The mother shook her head, and reminded him how often he had been
disappointed already.

'For the matter of that,' said Kit, 'you speak true and sensible
enough, as you always do, mother. Still, I do consider that a week is
quite long enough for 'em to be rambling about; don't you say so?'

'Quite long enough, Kit, longer than enough, but