To find him in this accommodating humour was more than she had bargained for.  A doubt had crossed her sometimes, whether, when the white donkey did come, there might not arise a battle with Peckaby, ere she should get off.  This apparently civil feeling on his part awoke a more social one on hers; and a qualm of conscience darted across her, suggesting that she might have made him a better wife had she been so disposed.  “He might have shook hands with me,” was her parting thought, as she unlocked the street door.

The donkey was waiting outside with all the patience for which donkeys are renowned.  It had been drawn up under a sheltering ledge at a door or two’s distance, to be out of the rain.  Its two conductors were muffled up, as befitted the inclemency of the night, something like their voices appeared to have been.  Mrs. Peckaby was not in her sober senses sufficiently to ask whether they were brothers from the New Jerusalem, or whether the style of costume they favoured might be the prevailing mode in that fashionable city; if so, it was decidedly more useful than elegant, consisting apparently of hop sacks, doubled over the head and over the back.

“Ready, missus?”

“I be quite ready,” she answered, in a tremble of delight.  “There ain’t no saddle!” she called out, as the donkey was trotted forward.

“You won’t want a saddle; these New Jerusalem animals bain’t like the ord’nary uns.  Jump on him, missus.”

Mrs. Peckaby was so exceedingly tall, that she had not far to jump.  She took her seat sideways, settled her gown, and laid hold of the bridle, which one of the men put into her hands.  He turned the donkey round, and set it going with a smack; the other helped by crying “Gee-ho!”

Up Clay Lane she proceeded in triumph.  The skies were dark, and the rain came soaking down; but Mrs. Peckaby’s heart was too warm to dwell on any temporary inconvenience.  If a thought crossed her mind that the beauty of the pink ribbons might be marred by the storm, so as somewhat to dim the glory of her entrance into the city and introduction to the saints, she drove it away again.  Trouble had no admission in her present frame of mind.  The gentlemen in the hop sacks continued to attend her; the one leading the donkey, the other walking behind and cheering the animal on with periodical gee-ho’s.

“I suppose as it’s a long way, sir?” asked Mrs. Peckaby, breaking the silence, and addressing the conductor.

“Middlin’,” replied he.

“And how do we get over the sea, please, sir?” asked she again.

“The woyage is pervided for, missus,” was the short and satisfactory response.  “Brother Jarrum took care of that when he sent us.”

Her heart went into a glow at the name.  And them envious disbelievers in Deerham had cast all sorts of disparaging accusations to the brother, openly expressing their opinion that he had gone off purposely without her, and that she’d never hear of him again!