Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it endowed a man with wind so that he could breathe great sighs, while going at a tremendous pace, and experience no sensation of fatigue.  The hero was communing with the elements, his familiars, and allowed him to pant as he pleased.  Some keen-eyed Kensington urchins, noticing the discrepancy between the pedestrian powers of the two, aimed their wit at Mr. Thompson junior’s expense.  The pace, and nothing but the pace, induced Ripton to proclaim that they had gone too far, when they discovered that they had over shot the mark by half a mile.  In the street over which stood love’s star, the hero thundered his presence at a door, and evoked a flying housemaid, who knew not Mrs. Berry.  The hero attached significance to the fact that his instincts should have betrayed him, for he could have sworn to that house.  The door being shut he stood in dead silence.

“Haven’t you got her card?” Ripton inquired, and heard that it was in the custody of the cabman.  Neither of them could positively bring to mind the number of the house.

“You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty Thieves,” Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with no response.

Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love!  The hero heavily descended the steps.

Ripton murmured that they were done for.  His commander turned on him, and said:  “Take all the houses on the opposite side, one after another.  I’ll take these.”  With a wry face Ripton crossed the road, altogether subdued by Richard’s native superiority to adverse circumstances.

Then were families aroused.  Then did mortals dimly guess that something portentous was abroad.  Then were labourers all day in the vineyard, harshly wakened from their evening’s nap.  Hope and Fear stalked the street, as again and again the loud companion summonses resounded.  Finally Ripton sang out cheerfully.  He had Mrs. Berry before him, profuse of mellow curtsies.

Richard ran to her and caught her hands:  “She’s well?—­upstairs?”

“Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and fluttering-like,” Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone.  The lover had flown aloft.

The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own private parlour, there to wait till he was wanted.

CHAPTER XXVII

“In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence, punish one of the two lightly,” is the dictum of The Pilgrim’s’s Scrip.

It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of action, and occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the wild horses that are ever fretting to gallop off with them.  But when they have given the reins and the whip to another, what are they to do?  They may go down on their knees, and beg and pray the furious charioteer to stop, or moderate his pace.  Alas! each fresh thing they do redoubles