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