Mrs. Peckaby went to the front room, opened the casement, and looked out.  To say that her heart leaped into her mouth would be a most imperfect figure of speech to describe the state of feeling that rushed over her.  In the rainy obscurity of the night she could discern something white drawn up to the door, and the figures of two men standing by it.  The only wonder was that she did not leap out; she might have done it, had the window been large enough.

“Do Susan Peckaby live here?” inquired a gruff voice, that seemed as if it were muffled.

“Oh, dear good gentlemen, yes!” she responded, in a tremble of excitement.  “Please what is it?”

“The white donkey’s come to take her to New Jerusalem.”

With a shrieking cry of joy that might have been heard all the way up Clay Lane, Mrs. Peckaby tore back to her chamber.

“Peckaby,” she cried, “Peckaby, the thing’s come at last!  The blessed animal that’s to bear me off.  I always said it would.”

Peckaby—­probably from drowsiness—­made no immediate response.  Mrs. Peckaby stooped down to the low bed, and shook him well by the shoulder.

“It’s the white quadruple, Peckaby, come at last!”

Peckaby growled out something that she was in a state of too great excitement to hear.  She lighted the candle; she flung on some of the things she had taken off; she ran back to the front before they were fastened, lest the messengers, brute and human, should have departed, and put her head out at the casement again, all in the utmost fever of agitation.

“A minute or two yet, good gentlemen, please!  I’m a’most ready.  I’m a-waiting to get out my purple gownd.”

“All right, missus,” was the muffled answer.

The “purple gownd” was kept in this very ex-room of Brother Jarrum’s hid in a safe place between some sheets of newspaper.  Had Mrs. Peckaby kept it open to the view of Peckaby, there’s no saying what grief the robe might not have come to, ere this.  Peckaby, in his tantrums, would not have been likely to spare it.  She put it on, and hooked it down the front, her trembling fingers scarcely able to accomplish it.  That it was full loose for her she was prepared to find; she had grown thin with fretting.  Then she put on a shawl; next, her bonnet; last some green leather gloves.  The shawl was black, with worked coloured corners—­a thin small shawl that hardly covered her shoulders; and the bonnet was a straw, trimmed with pink ribbons—­the toilette which had long been prepared.

“Good-bye, Peckaby,” said she, going in when she was ready, “You’ve said many a time as you wished I was off, and now you have got your wish.  But I don’t want to part nothing but friends.”

“Good-bye,” returned Peckaby, in a hearty tone, as he turned himself round on his bed.  “Give my love to the saints.”