"Dear old JACK!" thinks EDWIN to himself, pocketing his watch as he walks away; "he thinks just twice as much of me as any one else in the world, and I should feel doubly grateful."
As dusk draws on, the young fellow, returning from a long walk, espies an aged Irish lady leaning against a tree on the edge of the turnpike, with a pipe upside-down in her mouth, and her bonnet on wrong-side-afore.
"Divil a sick, gintlemen," is the answer, with a slight catch of the voice,--"bless the two of yez!"
EDWIN DROOD can scarcely avoid a start, as he thinks to himself, "Good Heaven! how much like JACK!"
"Do you eat cloves, madame?" he asks, respectfully.
"Cloves is it, honey? ah, thin, I do that, whin I'm expectin' company. Odether-nodether, but I've come here the day from New York for nothing. Sure phat's the names of you two darlints?"
"EDWIN," he answers, in some wonder, as he hands her a currency stamp, which, on account of the large hole worn in it, he has been repeatedly unable to pass himself.
"EDDY is it? Och hone, och hone, machree!" exclaims the venerable woman, hanging desolately around the tree by her arms while her bonnet falls over her left ear: "I've heard that name threatened. Och, acushla wirasthu!"
Believing that the matron will be less agitated if left alone, and, probably, able to get a little roadside sleep, EDWIN DROOD passes onward in deep thought. The boarding-house is reached, and _he_ enters.
J. BUMSTEAD'S day of the dinner is also marked by exhilarating experiences. With one coat-tail unwittingly tucked far up his back, so that it seems to be amputated, and his alpaca umbrella under his arm, he enters a grocery-store of the village, and abstractedly asks how strawberries are selling to-day? Upon being reminded that fresh fruit is very scarce in late December, he changes his purpose, and orders two bottles of Bourbon flavoring-extract sent to his address. And now he wishes to know what they are charging for sponges? They tell him that he must seek those articles at the druggist's, and he compromises by requesting that four lemons be forwarded to his residence. Have they any good Canton-flannel, suitable for a person of medium complexion?-- No?--Very well, then: send half a pound of cloves to his house before night.