Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 163: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

146 REYNOLDS’ WORKS ‘At the expiration of a week the farmer’s wife, finding that I was anxious to depart, took me up to her own chamber to have a little conversation with me. She said that herself, her husband, and everybody indeed at the farmhouse had conceived such a liking for me that they could not bear the idea of my leaving except under circumstances of comfort. She said she had therefore prepared a box of apparel and various necessaries for my use, and likewise begged me to accept the loan of a sufficient sum of money to take me to the place of my destination, wheresoever it might be. While gratefully expressing my thanks for all this kindness, I declared my wish to return without delay to England, and the farmer’s wife insisted upon my accept- ance of five hundred francs — or twenty pounds — for my travelling expenses. With the assurance that I should never forget so much generosity, I took my leave of the kind lady, her sons, and her daughters. The old man drove me over in his chaise-cart to the nearest town, whence I could obtain a conveyance for Paris. I was resolved to go to England by way of Calais, as I did not think fit to pass through Havre, for fear that Mrs. Knight or her son James should have made the friends whom they had in that town acquainted with the circumstances at Barcelona, or, rather, with a version of them most prejudicial to myself. I arrived without any accident, or adventure worth relating, at Calais, and thence I passed to Dover. Though anxious to proceed without delay to Southampton, in order to embrace my brother, yet having travelled almost day and night for the best part of a week in my journey from the extreme south of France to Dover, I was compelled to remain here a day or two to repose myself. I proceeded to the Admiral’s Head, which was kept by Mr. Marshall, with whose eldest daughter I was at school at Southampton. Kate Marshall was delighted to see me, and when she introduced me to her parents and sisters as the schoolfellow of whom she had so often spoken, I was received with a most cordial welcome, not in the light of a guest to whom a bill was to be sent in, but as a friend and visitress. Kate Marshall was now eighteen years of age, and a very fine young woman. Her two sisters were likewise exceedingly handsome. They were moreover all three kind-hearted and generous-minded creatures, and strove to make me as happy and comfortable as possible, Gomichbooks (Eo)