“Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!”

Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of approaching loneliness.  Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his ears, brought up the rear to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on the cheek from an old shoe precipitated by Mrs. Berry’s enthusiastic female domestic.

White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs:  they were off.  Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that she telegraphed, hand in air; awakening Ripton’s lungs, for the coachman to stop, and ran back to the house.  Richard chafed to be gone, but at his bride’s intercession he consented to wait.  Presently they beheld the old black-satin bunch stream through the street-door, down the bit of garden, and up the astonished street; halting, panting, capless at the carriage door, a book in her hand,—­a much-used, dog-leaved, steamy, greasy book, which; at the same time calling out in breathless jerks, “There! never ye mind looks!  I ain’t got a new one.  Read it, and don’t ye forget it!” she discharged into Lucy’s lap, and retreated to the railings, a signal for the coachman to drive away for good.

How Richard laughed at the Berry’s bridal gift!  Lucy, too, lost the omen at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume.  It was Dr. Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!

CHAPTER XXXI

General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of organs and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry’s abode, proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of fresh regions.  With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton’s arm to regulate his steps, and returned to the room where her creditor awaited her.  In the interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from which altitude he shook a dolorous head at the guilty woman.  She smoothed her excited apron, sighing.  Let no one imagine that she regretted her complicity.  She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more—­such is the born Pagan’s tenacity!  Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head.  O you wanton, improvident creature! said he.  O you very wise old gentleman! said she.  He asked her the thing she had been doing.  She enlightened him with the fatalist’s reply.  He sounded a bogey’s alarm of contingent grave results.  She retreated to the entrenched camp of the fact she had helped to make.

“It’s done!” she exclaimed.  How could she regret what she felt comfort to know was done?  Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched silent on the cake, with one finger downwards at Ripton’s incision there, showing a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.

The eloquent indication was understood.  “Dear! dear!” cried Mrs. Berry, “what a heap o’ cake, and no one to send it to!”