The words were scarcely out of her mouth when her attention was caught by some one in the passage inquiring for her; yes, actually for her.  She could hardly believe her eyes when she perceived it was her new-found old acquaintance, Tom Cliffe.

He was dressed very well, out of livery; indeed, he looked so extremely like a gentleman that Mrs. Jones’s little girl took him for one, called him “Sir,” and showed him into the parlor.

“All right.  I thought this was the house.  Uncommon sharp of me to hunt you out; wasn’t it Elizabeth?”

But Elizabeth was a little stiff, flurried, and perplexed.  Her mistresses were out; she did not know whether she ought to ask Tom in, especially as it must be into the parlor; there was no other place to take him to.

However, Tom settled the matter with a conclusive, “Oh, gammon!”—­sat himself down, and made himself quite comfortable.  And Elizabeth was so glad to see him—­glad to have another chance of talking about dear old Stowbury.  It could not be wrong; she would not say a word about, the family, not even tell him she lived with the Misses Leaf if she could help it.  And Tom did not seem in the least curious.

“Now, I call this quite a coincidence.  I was stopping at St. Pancras Church to look at a wedding—­some old city fogy who lives in Russell Square, and is making a great splash; and there I see you, Elizabeth, standing in the crowd, and looking so nice and spicy—­as fresh as an apple and as brisk as a bee.  I hummed and hawed and whistled, but I couldn’t catch your eye; then I missed you, and was vexed above a bit, till I saw one like you going in at this door, so I just knocked and asked; and here you are!  ’Pon my life, I am very glad to see you.”

“Thank you, Tom,” said Elizabeth, pleased, even grateful for the trouble he had taken about her:  she had so few friends; in truth, actually none.

They began to talk, and Tom Cliffe talked exceedingly well.  He had added to his natural cleverness a degree of London sharpness, the result of much “knocking about” ever since childhood.  Besides, his master, the literary gentleman, who had picked him out of the printing office, had taken a deal of pains with him.  Tom was, for his station, a very intelligent and superior young man.  Not a boy, though he was still under twenty, but a young man:  that precocity of development which often accompanies a delicate constitution, making him appear, as he was indeed, in mind and character, fully six or seven years older than his real age.

He was a handsome fellow, too, though small; dark haired, dark eyed, with regular and yet sensitive and mobile features.  Altogether Tom Cliffe was decidedly interesting, and Elizabeth took great pleasure in looking at him, and in thinking, with a certain half motherly, half romantic satisfaction, that but for her, and her carrying him home from under the horse’s heels, he might, humanly speaking, have been long ago buried in Stowbury church yard.