care much at finding that he could obtain no clue to her whom he was
seeking. The woman would not even tell him when the girl had left
her house, or give him any assistance towards finding her. He had at
first endeavoured to mollify the virago by offering to pay the amount
of any expenses which might have been left unsettled; but even on
this score he could obtain no consideration. She continued to revile
him, and he was obliged to leave her,--which he did, at last, with a
hurried step to avoid a quart pot which the woman had taken up to
hurl at his head, upon some comparison which he most indiscreetly
made between herself and poor Carry Brattle.
What should he do now? The only chance of finding the girl was, as he
thought, to go to the police-office. He was still in the lane, making
his way back to the street which would take him into the city,
when he was accosted by a little child. "You be the parson," said
the child. Mr. Fenwick owned that he was a parson. "Parson from
Bull'umpton?" said the child, inquiringly. Mr. Fenwick acknowledged
the fact. "Then you be to come with me." Whereupon Mr. Fenwick
followed the child, and was led into a miserable little court in
which population was squalid, thick, and juvenile. "She be here, at
Mrs. Stiggs's," said the child. Then the Vicar understood that he had
been watched, and that he was being taken to the place where she whom
he was seeking had found shelter.
CHAPTER XL.
TROTTER'S BUILDINGS.
In the back room up-stairs of Mr. Stiggs's house in Trotter's
Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that
since her coming thither on the preceding evening,--for only on the
preceding evening had she been turned away from the Three Honest
Men,--one of Mrs. Stiggs's children had been on the look-out in the
lane.
"I thought that you would come to me, sir," said Carry Brattle.
"Of course I should come. Did I not promise that I would come? And
where is your brother?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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