"Price one pound"—

"Here it is."

She clutched the coin as if she had been in
a den of thieves, and put it into her private
purse without a single look towards the
disappointed authoress. I buttoned up my
pockets with a firm determination to be
swindled no more, and turned with a
discontented visage from Miss Arabella and her
friend; and to my disgust heard Charles
Hammersmith, who had meanwhile come into
the room with all the parish, inviting Mr.
Slockum to read them a few passages from
his essay on "Possible things which did not
happen, and their probable bearing on the
history of the world."

Were we to have no supper— no wine?
Where were the sandwiches? Was Arabella
to be perpetually at my elbow, introducing
me to multitudes of people as her friend?
And finally, was I to be placed between
Arabella and her mother— a wretched old
woman, who had been wheeled up in one of
Mr. Bangles's three-wheeled chairs— and to
listen for some hours perhaps to the drivel
of the miserable impostor Slockum? And
how, in all this, was I assisting Charles and
Mary Bolton? for there they sat, the two
most attentive listeners to the drawling
orator, who began by a disquisition on our
probable condition if the world had never
been created.

As I did not take much interest in what
might have been my situation under the
circumstances, I applied my thoughts to the best
method of getting the young people off without
being observed and pursued. I reviewed all
the novels I had read, and plays I had seen;
and though there was an elopement in most
of them, it had not occurred exactly in the
same circumstances as those in which we were
placed. At last, I fixed on what struck me
to be a novelty, and I resolved to run off with
the girl myself, giving notice to Charles to
join us at the railway station in time for the
northern train. I took an opportunity of
communicating my plan to Charles while Mr.
Queeker was describing his visit to London—
the only one he had ever ventured— at the
time of George the Fourth's coronation, and
requested him to have a carriage from the
hotel at the door at ten o'clock, and to let
Miss Bolton know the arrangement. Having
made up my mind, I entered into the amusements
which were going on. They were
certainly not very lively, but, by a curious
coincidence, they constantly ended in a
contribution to the poor-box. If we played at
"What is it like?" a failure to answer was
punished by a fine of a sixpence to the Surplice-
Embroidery Fund, and they had actually
carried their system of levying contributions
so far, that once or twice 1 found myself
depositing pieces of coin in a case with a slit
in it, which had been set a-going for the
repair of the parish roads. The eyes of Miss
Arabella were fixed on all my movements,
and glowed with fiercer curiosity when
she saw me say a few words to Charles
Hammersmith.

She spoke to me in a sharp, inquisitive
manner as if I had been in the witness-box
of the Old Bailey. She spoke to the Miss
Boltons as if they were on the rack. She
hopped hither and thither, and could make
nothing of it. She whispered to Biddy Budd,
who answered her by a quotation from Cicero,
I suppose, for Arabella evidently did not
understand what she said. She then communicated
with Mr. Slockum, who did not even
try to comprehend her, for he knew it would
have occupied his faculties a week to have
picked up an idea; and finally committing
me, with an intelligent wink to her mother,
to the guardianship of that lynx-eyed old
woman, she left the room. So much the
better. We were now able to carry on our
plans without the observation of a person who
was evidently, by animal magnetism or otherwise,
in a fair way of discovering what we
were at. At last it was on the stroke of ten.
The night was pitchy dark. I proposed a
game which required the principal agent in it
to go out of the room, while the rest devised
a question for him to answer. Mary Bolton
had a headache, and went up stairs to bed.
She was to bring down her carpet-bag, and
slip into the carriage at the gate. I was to go
out to answer the question; Charles on my
non-appearance was to come out to discover
the cause of my delay. Everything was
excellently planned and succeeded to a
miracle. The game was to be a proverb.
They fixed on "Marry in haste and repent at
leisure." The first part of the proverb I was
actively engaged in bringing to bear. Having
slipped noiselessly through the hall, down the
avenue, and into the carriage that was waiting
as we had ordered, away we went in a
hush of expectation and success; and it was
only when we had gone about a mile, over
the roughest roads, or in the most uneasy
vehicle I ever encountered, that I ventured to
say,

"Well, my dear, I never thought I should
live to be the hero of a Gretna Green adventure."

There was no answer; but a sob which
shook the poor girl's bosom made itself
audible amidst the rumbling of the carriage.
I felt I had been wrong in speaking so
carelessly on such an agitating occasion, so I took
hold of her hand, and bade her be of good
cheer. The tyranny of her idiotic old
guardian, and the insupportable dulness of
the neighbours would be an ample excuse for
the step she took. There was no danger of
our being overtaken, though I confessed the
suspicions of that frightful old maid, Miss
Arabella, were strongly excited, and I feared
she already suspected our design.

"Doesn't she?" cried my companion,
banishing her sobs, and in the identical
shrill and frightful tones of Miss Arabella.