The hostess sat quite silent for a little time, but she very soon put both her hands in Mark’s and shook them heartily.
‘For you are a good man,’ she said; looking into his face with a smile, which was rather serious for her. ‘And I do believe have been a better friend to me to-night than ever I have had in all my life.’
‘Oh! as to that, you know,’ said Mark, ‘that’s nonsense. But love my heart alive!’ he added, looking at her in a sort of rapture, ‘if you are that way disposed, what a lot of suitable husbands there is as you may drive distracted!’
She laughed again at this compliment; and, once more shaking him by both hands, and bidding him, if he should ever want a friend, to remember her, turned gayly from the little bar and up the Dragon staircase.
‘Humming a tune as she goes,’ said Mark, listening, ‘in case I should think she’s at all put out, and should be made down-hearted. Come, here’s some credit in being jolly, at last!’
With that piece of comfort, very ruefully uttered, he went, in anything but a jolly manner, to bed.
He rose early next morning, and was a-foot soon after sunrise. But it was of no use; the whole place was up to see Mark Tapley off; the boys, the dogs, the children, the old men, the busy people and the idlers; there they were, all calling out ‘Good-b’ye, Mark,’ after their own manner, and all sorry he was going. Somehow he had a kind of sense that his old mistress was peeping from her chamber-window, but he couldn’t make up his mind to look back.
‘Good-b’ye one, good-b’ye all!’ cried Mark, waving his hat on the top of his walking-stick, as he strode at a quick pace up the little street. ‘Hearty chaps them wheelwrights—hurrah! Here’s the butcher’s dog a-coming out of the garden—down, old fellow! And Mr Pinch a-going to his organ—good-b’ye, sir! And the terrier-bitch from over the way—hie, then, lass! And children enough to hand down human natur to the latest posterity—good-b’ye, boys and girls! There’s some credit in it now. I’m a-coming out strong at last. These are the circumstances that would try a ordinary mind; but I’m uncommon jolly. Not quite as jolly as I could wish to be, but very near. Good-b’ye! good-b’ye!’