was ignominiously marched to the local police station.

Meanwhile Quelch's arrangements at home were scarcely working as
he had intended. The estimable Mrs. Widger, partly by reason of her
deafness and partly of native stupidity, had only half understood
his instructions about the letters. She knew she was to stamp them
and she knew she was to post them, but the dates in the corners
might have been runic inscriptions for any idea they conveyed to
her obfuscated intellect. Accordingly, the first time she visited
her usual house of call, which was early on the morning of Good
Friday, she proceeded, in her own language, to "get the dratted things
off her mind" by dropping them both into the nearest pillar-box.

On the following day, therefore, Mrs. Quelch at Lawestoft was
surprised to find on the breakfast-table _two_ letters in
her Benjamin's handwriting. Her surprise was still greater when,
on opening them, she found one to be a graphic account of a visit
to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion
was obvious: either Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow
got ahead of the almanac, or he was "carrying on" in some very
underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative,
and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She
cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and, grasping her umbrella in
a manner which boded no good to any one who stayed her progress,
started by the next train for Liverpool Street.

On reaching home she extracted from the weeping Widger, who had
just been spending the last of Benjamin's five shillings, and was
far gone in depression and gin and water, that her "good gentleman"
had not been home since Thursday night. This was bad enough, but