Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/34

Rh retired to their own apartment, and had not been seen by the respectable triad ; yet Miss Cross said, she thought from the looks of an old pair of boots, which were tied to one of Mr. trunks, which was standing in the porch, that "Tompkins's they were no great shakes." As to this point she had a right also to speak her opinion, seeing that her father had been a respectable retail shoemaker. So, therefore, the report of Mrs. Steele, Mrs. Hawkins, and Miss Cross, did but whet the curiosity of the congregation as to the private history, present estate, and future prospects of poor Mr. Tompkins and his wife. Many supposed that his name was assumed for the occasion. So many, they urged, were indicted or sued, who had such an alias, that he must have broken out of the city prison, or run away and left his bail in the lurch. An inveterate reader of all the newspapers observed, that a Mr. Tompkins was advertised as having left his wife without any means of subsistence, and would pay no debts contracted by him. It was probable that he had a female partner in his flight ; and the circumstance of his coming in such a clandestine way to the house of the widow Wilkins, was certainly a singular coincidence. It would be endless, and scarcely amusing, to mention all the suppositions broached on the subject. One, which was quite popular, was, that this Mr. Tompkins must be the man who had been hanged in Yorkshire some months before, and who, it was rumoured, had been resuscitated. The most speculatively benevolent hoped that these people would be able to pay their board to the widow, as she was a good sort of woman, though none of the wisest, and could not afford to lose it. The most scrupulously decorous hoped this couple were actually married, and had not come to bring disgrace into Mrs. Wilkins's house, as she had always passed for an honest woman, as had her mother before her. The next morning, after breakfast, Mr. Tompkins came forth from the widow's house, and walked through the village to the barber's shop. His gait was that of a grave gentleman who has passed the meridian of life, and has nothing to excite him immediately to unnecessary action. There was nothing in his manner that was at all singular, nor was there even the inquisitive expression in his countenance, which would be natural in that of an entire stranger in the place. He walked as a man walks who is going over ground he has trodden all his life, in the usual routine of his occupations. His clothes were plain black, cut after no particular fashion or fancy, but such as old gentlemen generally wear. His walking-stick was plain, with