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ance, Mr Durant, had an intimate friend who dwelt near a beautiful village in Kent. When Queeker mentioned the circumstance of the secret mission which called him to Ramsgate, he discovered that the old gentleman was on the point of starting for this village, in company with his daughter and her cousin Fanny. "You'll travel with us, I hope, Queeker; our roads lie in the same direction, at least a part of the way, you know," said the hearty little old gentleman, with good-nature beaming in every wrinkle, from the crown of his bald head to the last fold of his treble chin; "it will be such a comfort to have you to help me take care of the girls. And if you can spare time to turn aside for a day or two, I promise you a hearty welcome from my friend--whose residence, named Jenkinsjoy, is an antique paradise, and his hospitality unbounded. He has splendid horses, too, and will give you a gallop over as fine a country as exists between this and the British Channel. You ride, of course?" Queeker admitted that he could ride a little. "At least," he added, after a pause, "I used frequently to get rides on a cart-horse when I was a very little boy." So it was arranged that Queeker should travel with them. Moreover, he succeeded in obtaining from his employers permission to delay for three days the prosecution of the mission--which, although secret, was not immediately pressing--in order that he might visit Jenkinsjoy. It was fortunate that, when he went to ask this brief holiday, he found Mr Merryheart in the office. Had it been his mischance to fall upon Dashope, he would have received a blunt refusal and prompt dismissal--so thoroughly were the joys of that gentleman identified with the woes of other people. But, great though Queeker's delight undoubtedly was on this occasion, it was tempered by a soul-harassing care, which drew forth whole quires of poetical effusions to the moon and other celestial bodies. This secret sorrow was caused by the dreadful and astonishing fact, that, do what he would to the contrary, the weather-cock of his affections was veering slowly but steadily away from Katie, and pointing more and more decidedly towards Fanny Hennings! It is but simple justice to the poor youth to state that he loathed and abhorred himself in consequence. "There am I," he soliloquised, on the evening before the journey began, "a monster, a brute, a lower animal almost, who have sought with all my stren
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