r the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that she was a-goin
out upon business, and that Fanny must keep the lodge; which Fanny,
after a very faint objection indeed, consented to do. So Mrs. Bolton
took her bonnet and market-basket, and departed; and the instant she was
gone, Fanny went and sae by the window which commanded Bows's door, and
never once took her eyes away from that quarter of Shepherd's Inn.

Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of the place, and
making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them
held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton's
collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She
noticed nothing but Bows's door.

At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. He had come
out. He would pass the door again. But her poor little countenance fell
in an instant more. Pendennis, indeed, came out; but Bows followed after
him. They passed under the archway together. He only took off his hat,
and bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak.

In three or four minutes--Fanny did not know how long, but she looked
furiously at him when he came into the lodge--Bows returned alone, and
entered into the porter's room.

"Where's your Ma, dear?" he said to Fanny.

"I don't know," Fanny said, with an angry toss. "I don't follow Ma's
steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows."

"Am I my mother's keeper?" Bows said, with his usual melancholy
bitterness. "Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I've brought a cake
for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other who
can read them the next best."

When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows
put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went off
to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work, and
pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great excitement
and anger, as she plied her needle. Bows sate so that he could command
the entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person whom, perhaps,
he expected to see, never made his appearance again. And Mrs. Bolton
came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in place of the person whom she
had expected to see. The reader perhaps can guess what was his name?

The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to the
apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of the
Milesian kings, was not particularly