This Mr. Coachman did, with a curious, puzzled, grinning air.

Perkins descended, and on being asked, "Vere ham I to drive the
young 'oman, sir?" I am sorry to say muttered something like an
oath, and uttered the above-mentioned words, "Caroline Place,
Mecklenburgh Square," in a tone which I should be inclined to
describe as both dogged and sheepish--very different from that
cheery voice which he had used when he first gave the order.

Poor Lucy, in the course of those fatal three hours which had passed
while Mr. Perkins was pacing up and down Baker Street, had received
a lecture which lasted exactly one hundred and eighty minutes--from
her aunt first, then from her uncle, whom we have seen marching
homewards, and often from both together.

Sir George Gorgon and his lady poured out such a flood of advice and
abuse against the poor girl, that she came away from the interview
quite timid and cowering; and when she saw John Perkins (the sly
rogue! how well he thought he had managed the trick!) she shrank
from him as if he had been a demon of wickedness, ordered him out of
the carriage, and went home by herself, convinced that she had
committed some tremendous sin.

While, then, her coach jingled away to Caroline Place, Perkins, once
more alone, bent his steps in the same direction. A desperate,
heart-stricken man, he passed by the beloved's door, saw lights in
the front drawing-room, felt probably that she was there; but he
could not go in. Moodily he paced down Doughty Street, and turning
abruptly into Bedford Row, rushed into his own chambers, where Mrs.
Snooks, the laundress, had prepared his humble Sabbath meal.