Mrs. Haller at Home


Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth,
where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr.
Foker's lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that
gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were
over a chemist's shop whose stock of cigars and sodawater went off
rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr.
Spavin, Foker's friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter had
driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog, a
friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.

Pen's healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the
waxy debauched little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it.
"Who's that man?" he thought, "he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand
don't shake of a morning, I'd bet five to one."

Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!--Mr. Spavin
could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day,
sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have anything? There
was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Pendennis's
name, on the card which the latter took out and laid down (perhaps Pen in
these days was rather proud of having a card)--and so the young men took
leave.

Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his
nails by the shore of the much-sounding sea. It stretched before him
bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay,