for my aunt's donation, which never came, and with my own little stock of
money besides, that Mrs. Hoggarty's card parties had lessened by a good
five-and-twenty shillings, I calculated that, after paying my fare, I
should get to town with a couple of seven-shilling pieces in my pocket.

I walked down the village at a deuce of a pace; so quick that, if the
thing had been possible, I should have overtaken ten o'clock that had
passed by me two hours ago, when I was listening to Mrs. H.'s long
stories over her terrible Rosolio. The truth is, at ten I had an
appointment under a certain person's window, who was to have been looking
at the moon at that hour, with her pretty quilled nightcap on, and her
blessed hair in papers.

There was the window shut, and not so much as a candle in it; and though
I hemmed and hawed, and whistled over the garden paling, and sang a song
of which Somebody was very fond, and even threw a pebble at the window,
which hit it exactly at the opening of the lattice,--I woke no one except
a great brute of a house-dog, that yelled, and howled, and bounced so at
me over the rails, that I thought every moment he would have had my nose
between his teeth.

So I was obliged to go off as quickly as might be; and the next morning
Mamma and my sisters made breakfast for me at four, and at five came the
"True Blue" light six-inside post-coach to London, and I got up on the
roof without having seen Mary Smith.

As we passed the house, it _did_ seem as if the window curtain in her
room was drawn aside just a little bit. Certainly the window was open,
and it had been shut the night before: but away went the coach; and the
village, cottage, and the churchyard, and Hicks's hayricks were soon out