, Betsy-Jane and Ameliar--Ann, went away in their little innocent
pinafores, and disported in the courtyard on the smooth gravel, round
about the statue of Shepherd the Great.

And here, as they were playing, they very possibly communicated with an
old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn; for while Pen was making
himself agreeable to the ladies at the lodge, who were laughing
delighted at his sallies, an old gentleman passed under the archway from
the Inn-square, and came and looked in at the door of the lodge.

He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated upon
a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with Mrs. Bolton
and her daughter.

"What! Mr. Bows? How d'you do, Bows?" cried out Pen, in a cheery, loud
voice. "I was coming to see you, and was asking your address of these
ladies."

"You were coming to see me, were you, sir?" Bows said, and came in
with a sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. "Plague on that old man!"
somebody thought in the room: and so, perhaps, some one else besides
her.

CHAPTER XLIX. In Shepherd's Inn

Our friend Pen said "How d'ye do, Mr. Bows," in a loud cheery voice on
perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in a dashing off-hand manner,
yet you could have seen a blush upon Arthur's face (answered by Fanny,
whose cheek straightway threw out a similar fluttering red signal); and
after Bows and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former had ironically
accepted the other's assertion that he was about to pay Mr. Costigan's
chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather guilty silence in the
company, which Pen presently tried to dispel by making a great rattling
noise. The silence of course departed at Mr. Arthur's noise, but the
gloom remained and deepened, as the darkness does in a vault if you
light up a single taper in it. Pendennis tried to describe, in a jocular
manner, the transactions of the previous night, and attempted to give
an imitation of Costigan vainly expostulating with the check-taker at
Vauxhall. It was not a good imitation. What stranger can imitate that
perfection? Nobody laughed. Mrs. Bolton did not in the least understand
what part Mr. Pendennis was performing, and whether it was the
check-taker or the Captain he was taking off. Fanny wore an alarmed
face, and tried a timid giggle; old Mr. Bows looked as glum as when he
fiddled in the orchestra, or played a difficult piece upon the old piano
at the Back Kitchen. Pen felt