ly riding with his toes
out, to give Pen his three hours' reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil,
who shot by him like the wind. Smirke's pony shied, as the other
thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the
stinging-nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed towards
the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before
poor Smirke had picked himself up.

Pen had resolved in his mind that he must see Foker that morning; he
must hear about her; know about her; be with somebody who knew her; and
honest Smirke, for his part, sitting up among the stinging-nettles,
as his pony cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself,
ought he to go to Fairoaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away
for the day. Yes, he thought he might go, too. He might go and ask Mrs.
Pendennis when Arthur would be back; and hear Miss Laura her Watts's
Catechism. He got up on the little pony--both were used to his slipping
off--and advanced upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed
away in a whirlwind.

Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little; and the curate had
tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Pen had started in the
first heat of the mad race.

CHAPTER V. Mrs. Haller at Home

Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth,
where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr.
Foker's lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that
gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which
were over a chemist's shop whose stock of cigars and sodawater went off
rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr.
Spavin, Foker's friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter
had driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog, a
friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.

Pen's healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the
waxy debauched little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it.
"Who's that man?" he thought, "he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand
don't shake of a morning, I'd bet five to one."

Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!--Mr. Spavin
could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day,
sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have anything? There
was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Pendennis's
name, on the card which t