The String of Pearls (1850), p. 24

and satisfaction to a meeting which she certainly had no evidence to know, might not be of the most disastrous character.
She asked herself over and over again if she should tell her lather what had occurred, but as often as she thought of doing so she shrank from carrying out the
mental suggestion, and all the natural disposition again to keep to herself the secret of her happiness returned to her in full force.
But yet she was not so unjust as not to feel that it was treating her father but
slightingly to throw all her sorrows into his lap, as it were, and then to keep from
him everything of joy appertaining to the same circumstances.
This was a thing that she was not likely to continue doing, and so she made up her mind to relieve her conscience from the pang it would otherwise have had, by determining to tell him, after the interview in the Temple Gardens, what was its result; but she could not make up her mind to do so beforehand; it was so pleasant
and so delicious to keep the secret all to herself, and to feel that she alone knew that her lover had so closely kept faith with her as to be only one day behind his time in sending to her, and that day, perhaps, far from being his fault.
And so she reasoned to herself and tried to wile away the anxious hours, sometimes succeeding in forgetting how long it was still to sunset, and at others feeling as if each minute was perversely swelling itself out into ten times its usual proportion of time in order to become wearisome to her.
She had said that she would be at the Temple Gardens two hours before sunset instead of one, and she kept her word, for, looking happier than she had done for weeks, she tripped down the stairs of her father's house, and was about to leave it by the private staircase, when a strange gaunt-looking figure attracted her attention.
This was no other than the Rev. Mr. Lupin: he was a long strange -looking man, and upon this occasion he came upon what he called horseback, that is to say, he
was mounted upon a very small pony, which seemed quite unequal to support his weight, and was so short that, if the reverend gentleman had not poked his legs out at an angle, they must inevitably have touched the ground.
"Praise the Lord!" he said: "I have intercepted the evil one. Maiden, I have come here at thy mother's bidding, and thou shalt remain and partake of the mixture called tea."
Johanna scarcely condescended to glance at him, but drawing her mantle close around her, which he actually had the impertinence to endeavour to lay hold of, she walked on, so that the reverend gentleman was left to make the best he could of the matter.
"Stop," he cried, "stop! I can well perceive that the devil has a strong hold of you: I can well perceive—the lord have mercy upon me! this animal hath some design against me as sure as fate."
This last ejaculation arose from the fact that the pony had flung up his heels behind in a most mysterious manner.
"I am afraid, sir," said a lad who was no more than our old acquaintance, Sam—"I am afraid, sir, that there is something the matter with the pony."
Up went the pony's heels again in the same unaccountable manner.
"God bless me!" said the reverend gentleman; "he never did such a thing before. I—there he goes again—murder! Young man, I pray you to help me to
get down; I think I know you; you are the nephew of the goodly Mrs. Pump—truly this animal wishes to be the death of me."
At this moment the pony gave such a vigorous kick up behind, that Mr. Lupin was fairly pitched upon his head, and made a complete summerset, alighting with his heels in the spectacle-maker's passage; and it unfortunately happened that Mrs. Oakley at that moment, hearing the altercation, came rushing out, and the first thing she did was to fall sprawling over Mr. Lupin's feet.
Sam now felt it time to go; and as we dislike useless mysteries, we may as well explain that these extraordinary circumstances arose from the fact that Sam
had brought from the haberdasher's opposite a halfpenny-worth of pins, and had amused himself by making a pincushion of the hind quarters of the Reverend Mr.