idly, from hour to hour, and from minute to minute, while he yet went on reflecting all the time.
Walter had left the fields behind him, and was plodding homeward in the same abstracted mood, when he heard a shout from a man, and then a woman’s voice calling to him loudly by name. Turning quickly in his surprise, he saw that a hackney-coach, going in the contrary direction, had stopped at no great distance; that the coachman was looking back from his box and making signals to him with his whip; and that a young woman inside was leaning out of the window, and beckoning with immense energy. Running up to this coach, he found that the young woman was Miss Nipper, and that Miss Nipper was in such a flutter as to be almost beside herself.
"Staggs’s Gardens, Mr. Walter!" said Miss Nipper; "if you please, oh do!"
"Eh?" cried Walter; "what is the matter?"
"Oh, Mr. Walter, Staggs’s Gardens, if you please!" said Susan.
"There!" cried the coachman, appealing to Walter, with a sort of exalting despair; "that’s the way the young lady’s been a goin’ on for up’ards of a mortal hour, and me continivally backing out of no thoroughfares, where she would drive up. I ’ve had a many fares in this coach, first and last, but never such a fare as her."
"Do you want to go to Staggs’s Gardens, Susan?" inquired Walter.
"Ah! She wants to go there! Where is it?" growled the coachman.
"I don’t know where it is!" exclaimed Susan, wildly. "Mr. Walter, I was there once myself, along with Miss Floy and our poor darling Master Paul, on the very day when you found Miss Floy in the City, for we lost her coming home, Mrs. Richards and me, and a mad bull, and Mrs. Richards’s eldest, and though I went there afterwards, I can’t remember where it is, I think it’s sunk into the ground. Oh, Mr. Walter, don’t desert me, Staggs’s Gardens, if you please! Miss Floy’s darling—all our darlings—little, meek, meek Master Paul! Oh Mr. Walter!"
"Good God!" cried Walter. "Is he very ill?"
"The pretty flower!" cried Susan, wringing her hands, "has took the fancy that he’d like to see his old nurse, and I ’ve come to bring her to his bedside, Mrs. Staggs, of Polly Toodle’s Gardens, some one pray!"
Greatly moved by what he heard, and catching Susan’s earnestness immediately, Walter, now that he understood the nature of her errand, dashed into it with such ardour that the coachman had enough to do to follow closely as he ran before, inquiring here and there and everywhere, the way to Staggs’s Gardens.
There was no such place as Staggs’s Gardens. It had vanished from the earth. Where the old rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces now reared their heads, and granite columns of gigantic girth opened a vista to the railway world beyond. The miserable waste ground, where the refuse-matter had been heaped of yore, was swallowed up and gone; and in its frowsy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed with rich goods and costly merchandise. The old by-streets now swarmed with passengers and vehicles of every kind: the new streets that had stopped disheartened in the mud and waggon-ruts, formed towns within themselves, originating wholesome comforts and conveniences belonging to themselves, and never tried nor thought of until they sprung into existence. Bridges that had led to
