blic view further on in the week,
suggested that Bob should wait till three or four that afternoon, when
the road-waggon would arrive, as the lost lady might have preferred that
mode of conveyance; and when Bob appeared rather hurt at the suggestion,
the landlord's wife assured him, as a woman who knew good life, that many
genteel persons travelled in that way during the present high price of
provisions. Loveday, who knew little of travelling by land, readily
accepted her assurance and resolved to wait.

Wandering up and down the pavement, or leaning against some hot wall
between the waggon-office and the corner of the street above, he passed
the time away. It was a still, sunny, drowsy afternoon, and scarcely a
soul was visible in the length and breadth of the street. The office was
not far from All Saints' Church, and the church-windows being open, he
could hear the afternoon service from where he lingered as distinctly as
if he had been one of the congregation. Thus he was mentally conducted
through the Psalms, through the first and second lessons, through the
burst of fiddles and clarionets which announced the evening-hymn, and
well into the sermon, before any signs of the waggon could be seen upon
the London road.

The afternoon sermons at this church being of a dry and metaphysical
nature at that date, it was by a special providence that the
waggon-office was placed near the ancient fabric, so that whenever the
Sunday waggon was late, which it always was in hot weather, in cold
weather, in wet weather, and in weather of almost every other sort, the
rattle, dismounting, and swearing outside completely drowned the parson's
voice within, and sustained the flagging interest of the congregation at
precisely the right moment. No sooner did the charity children begin to
writhe on their benches, and adult snores grow audible, than the waggon
arrived.

Captain Loveday felt a kind of sinking in his poetry at the possibility
of her for whom they had made such preparations being in the slow,
unwieldy vehicle which crunched its way towards him; but he would not
give in to the weakness. Neither would he walk down the street to meet
the waggon, lest she should not be there. At last the broad wheels drew
up against the kerb, the waggoner with his white smock-frock, and whip as
long as a fishing-line, descended from the pony on which he rode
alongside, and the six broad-chested horses backed from their collars and
shook