Dear Ripton,—­You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately.  Not a word to a soul.  Then come along with Tom.  R.D.F.”

“Lodgings for a lady!” Ripton meditated aloud:  “What sort of lodgings?  Where am I to get lodgings?  Who’s the lady?—­I say!” he addressed the mysterious messenger.  “So you’re Tom Bakewell, are you, Tom?”

Tom grinned his identity.

“Do you remember the rick, Tom?  Ha! ha!  We got out of that neatly.  We might all have been transported, though.  I could have convicted you, Tom, safe!  It’s no use coming across a practised lawyer.  Now tell me.”  Ripton having flourished his powers, commenced his examination:  “Who’s this lady?”

“Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir,” Tom resumed his scowl to reply.

“Ah!” Ripton acquiesced.  “Is she young, Tom?”

Tom said she was not old.

“Handsome, Tom?”

“Some might think one thing, some another,” Tom said.

“And where does she come from now?” asked Ripton, with the friendly cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.

“Comes from the country, sir.”

“A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?”

Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a look.  Tom’s face was a dead blank.

“Ah!” Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite him.  “Why, you’re quite a scholar, Tom!  Mr. Richard is well.  All right at home?”

“Come to town this mornin’ with his uncle,” said Tom.  “All well, thank ye, sir.”

“Ha!” cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, “now I see.  You all came to town to-day, and these are your boxes outside.  So, so!  But Mr. Richard writes for me to get lodgings for a lady.  There must be some mistake—­he wrote in a hurry.  He wants lodgings for you all—­eh?”

“’M sure I d’n know what he wants,” said Tom.  “You’d better go by the letter, sir.”

Ripton re-consulted that document. “’Lodgings for a lady, and then come along with Tom.  Not a word to a soul.’  I say! that looks like—­but he never cared for them.  You don’t mean to say, Tom, he’s been running away with anybody?”

Tom fell back upon his first reply:  “Better wait till ye see Mr. Richard, sir,” and Ripton exclaimed:  “Hanged if you ain’t the tightest witness I ever saw!  I shouldn’t like to have you in a box.  Some of you country fellows beat any number of cockneys.  You do!”

Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering how to perform his friend’s injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady fresh from the country ought to lodge near the parks, in which direction he told the cabman to drive.  Thus, unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined the hero, and accepted his character in the New Comedy.