It were surely a breach of politeness on our part not to attend Mr. Ketch in his impromptu evening visit! He shuffled along at the very top of his speed, his mouth watering, while the delicious odour of tripe and onions appeared to be borne on the air to his olfactory nerves: so strong is the force of fancy. Arrived at his destination, he found the shop closed. It was Mrs. Jenkins’s custom to close at seven from October to April; and the shutters had now just been put up. Mr. Ketch seized the knocker on the shop-door—there was no other entrance to the house—and brought it down with a force that shook the first-floor sitting-room, and startled Mr. Harper, the lay clerk, almost out of his armchair, as he sat before the fire. Mrs. Jenkins’s maid, a young person of seventeen, very much given to blacking her face, opened it.

“Be I in time?” demanded Ketch, his voice shaking.

“In time for what?” responded the girl.

“Why, for supper,” said Ketch, penetrating into the shop, which was lighted by a candle that stood on the counter, the one the girl had brought in her hand. “Is old Jenkins the bedesman come yet?”

“Old Jenkins ain’t here,” said she. “You had better go into the parlour, if you’re come to supper.”

Ketch went down the shop, sniffing curiously. Sharp as fancy is, he could not say that he was regaled with the scent of onions, but he supposed the saucepan lid might be on. For, as was known to Mr. Ketch, and to other of the initiated in tripe mysteries, it was generally thought advisable, by good housewives, to give the tripe a boil up at home, lest it should have become cold in its transit from the vendor’s. The girl threw open the door of the small parlour, and told him he might sit down if he liked; she did not overburden the gentleman with civility. “Missis’ll be here soon,” said she.

Ketch entered the parlour, and sat down. There was a fire in the grate, but no light, and there were not, so far as Ketch could see, any preparations yet for the entertainment. “They’re going to have it downstairs in the kitchen,” soliloquized he. “And that’s a sight more comfortabler. She’s gone out to fetch it, I shouldn’t wonder!” he continued, alluding to Mrs. Jenkins, and sniffing again strongly, but without result. “That’s right! she won’t let ‘em serve her with short onions, she won’t; she has a tongue of her own. I wonder how much beer there’ll be!”

He sat on pretty patiently, for him, about half an hour, and then took the liberty of replenishing the fire from a coal-box that stood there. Another quarter of an hour was passed much more impatiently, when Ketch began to grow uneasy and lose himself in all sorts of grave conjectures. Could she have arrived too late, and found the tripe all sold, and so had stopped out to supper herself somewhere? Such a thing as a run on the delicacy had occurred more than once, to Ketch’s certain knowledge, and tardy customers had been sent away disappointed, to wait in longing anticipations for the next tripe night. He went into a cold perspiration at the bare idea. And where was old Jenkins, all this time, that he had not come in? And where was Joe? A pretty thing to invite a gentleman out to an impromptu supper, and serve him in this way! What could they mean by it?

He groped his way round the corner of the shop to where lay the kitchen stairs, whose position he pretty well knew, and called. “Here, Sally, Betty—whatever your name is—ain’t there nobody at home?”

The girl heard, and came forth, the same candle in hand. “Who be you calling to, I’d like to know? My name’s Lidyar, if you please.”

“Where’s your missis?” responded Ketch, suffering the name to drop into abeyance. “Is she gone out for the tripe?”

“Gone out for what tripe?” asked the girl. “What be you talking of?”

“The tripe for supper,” said Ketch.

“There ain’t no tripe for supper,” replied she.

“There is tripe for supper,” persisted Ketch. “And me and old Jenkins are going to have some of it. There’s tripe and onions.”

The girl shook her head. “I dun know nothing about it. Missis is upstairs, fixing the mustard.”

Oh come! this gave a promise of something. Old Ketch thought mustard the greatest condiment that tripe could be accompanied by, in conjunction with onions. But she must have been a long time “fixing” the mustard; whatever that might mean. His spirits dropped again, and he grew rather exasperated. “Go up and ask your missis how long I be to wait?” he growled. “I was told to come here at seven for supper, and now it’s a’most eight.”

The girl, possibly feeling a little curiosity herself, came up with her candle. “Master ain’t so well to-night,” remarked she. “He’s gone to bed, and missis is putting him a plaster on his chest.”

The words fell as ice on old Ketch. “A mustard-plaster?” shrieked he.

“What else but a mustard-plaster!” she retorted. “Did you think it was a pitch? There’s a fire lighted in his room, and she’s making it there.”

Nothing more certain. Poor Jenkins, who had coughed more than usual the last two days, perhaps from the wet weather, and whose chest in consequence was very painful, had been ordered to bed this night by his wife when tea was over. She had gone up herself, as soon as her shop was shut, to administer a mustard-plaster. Ketch was quite stunned with uncertainty. A man in bed, with a plaster on his chest, was not likely to invite company to supper.

Before he had seen his way out of the shock, or the girl had done staring at him, Mrs. Jenkins descended the stairs and joined them, having been attracted by the conversation. She had slipped an old buff dressing-gown over her clothes, in her capacity of nurse, and looked rather en deshabille; certainly not like a lady who is about to give an entertainment.

“He says he’s come to supper: tripe and onions,” said the girl, unceremoniously introducing Mr. Ketch and the subject to her wondering mistress.

Mrs. Jenkins, not much more famous for meekness in expressing her opinions than was Ketch, turned her gaze upon that gentleman. “What do you say you have come for?” asked she.

“Why, I have come for supper, that’s what I have come for,” shrieked Ketch, trembling. “Jenkins invited me to supper; tripe and onions; and I’d like to know what it all means, and where the supper is.”

“You are going into your dotage,” said Mrs. Jenkins, with an amount of scorn so great that it exasperated Ketch as much as the words themselves. “You’ll be wanting a lunatic asylum next. Tripe and onions! If Jenkins was to hint at such a thing as a plate of tripe coming inside my house, I’d tripe him. There’s nothing I have such a hatred to as tripe; and he knows it.”

“Is this the way to treat a man?” foamed Ketch, disappointment and hunger driving him almost into the state hinted at by Mrs. Jenkins. “Joe Jenkins sends me down a note an hour ago, to come here to supper with his old father, and it was to be tripe and onions! It is tripe night!” he continued, rather wandering from the point of argument, as tears filled his eyes. “You can’t deny as it’s tripe night.”

“Here, Lydia, open the door and let him out,” cried Mrs. Jenkins, waving her hand imperatively towards it. “And what have you been at with your face again?” continued she, as the candle held by that damsel reflected its light. “One can’t see it for colly. If I do put you into that mask I have threatened, you won’t like it, girl. Hold your tongue, old Ketch, or I’ll call Mr. Harper down to you. Write a note! What else? He has wrote no note; he has been too suffering the last few hours to think of notes, or of you either. You are a lunatic, it’s my belief.”

“I shall be drove one,” sobbed Ketch. “I was promised a treat of—”

“Is that door open, Lydia? There! Take yourself off. My goodness, me! disturbing my house with such a crazy errand!” And, taking old Ketch by the shoulders, who was rather feeble and tottering, from lumbago and age, Mrs. Jenkins politely marshalled him outside, and closed the door upon him.

“Insolent old fellow!” she exclaimed to her husband, to whom she went at once and related the occurrence. “I wonder what he’ll pretend he has next from you? A note of invitation, indeed!”

“My dear,” said Jenkins, revolving the news, and speaking as well as his chest would allow him, “it must have been a trick played him by the young college gentlemen. We should not be too hard upon the poor old man. He’s not very agreeable or good-tempered, I’m afraid it must be allowed; but—I’d not have sent him away without a bit of supper, my dear.”

“I dare say you’d not,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “All the world knows you are soft enough for anything. I have sent him away with a flea in his ear; that’s what I have done.”

Mr. Ketch had at length come to the same conclusion: the invitation must be the work of the college gentlemen. Only fancy the unhappy man, standing outside Mrs. Jenkins’s inhospitable door! Deceived, betrayed, fainting for supper, done out of the delicious tripe and onions, he leaned against the shutters, and gave vent to a prolonged and piteous howl. It might have drawn tears from a stone.

In a frame of mind that was not enviable, he turned his steps homeward, clasping his hands upon his empty stomach, and vowing the most intense vengeance upon the college boys. The occurrence naturally caused him to cast back his thoughts to that other trick—the locking him into the cloisters, in which Jenkins had been a fellow-victim—and he doubled his fists in impotent anger. “This comes of their not having been flogged for that!” he groaned.

Engaged in these reflections of gall and bitterness, old Ketch gained his lodge, unlocked it, and entered. No wonder that he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, the reminiscence being so strong within him.

But, to say he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, is a mere figure of speech. No keys were there. Ketch stood a statue transfixed, and stared as hard as the flickering blaze from his dying fire would allow him. Seizing a match-box, he struck a light and held it to the hook. The keys were not there.

Ketch was no conjuror, and it never occurred to him to suspect that the keys had been removed before his own departure. “How had them wicked ones got in?” he foamed. “Had they forced his winder?—had they took a skeleton key to his door?—had they come down the chimbley? They were capable of all three exploits; and the more soot they collected about ‘em in the descent, the better they’d like it. He didn’t think they’d mind a little fire. It was that insolent Bywater!—or that young villain, Tod Yorke!—or that undaunted Tom Channing!—or perhaps all three leagued together! Nothing wouldn’t tame them.”

He examined the window; he examined the door; he cast a glance up the chimney. Nothing, however, appeared to have been touched or disturbed, and there was no soot on the floor. Cutting himself a piece of bread and cheese, lamenting at its dryness, and eating it as he went along, he proceeded out again, locking up his lodge as before.

Of course he bent his steps to the cloisters, going to the west gate. And there, perhaps to his surprise, perhaps not, he found the gate locked, just as he might have left it himself that very evening, and the keys hanging ingeniously, by means of the string, from one of the studded nails, right over the keyhole.

“There ain’t a boy in the school but what’ll come to be hung!” danced old Ketch in his rage.

He would have preferred not to find the keys; but to go to the head-master with a story of their theft. It was possible, it was just possible that, going, keys in hand, the master might refuse to believe his tale.

Away he hobbled, and arrived at the house of the head-master. Check the first!—The master was not at home. He had gone to a dinner-party. The other masters lived at a distance, and Ketch’s old legs were aching. What was he to do? Make his complaint to some one, he was determined upon. The new senior, Huntley, lived too far off for his lumbago; so he turned his steps to the next senior’s, Tom Channing, and demanded to see him.

Tom heard the story, which was given him in detail. He told Ketch—and with truth—that he knew nothing about it, but would make inquiries in the morning. Ketch was fain to depart, and Tom returned to the sitting-room, and threw himself into a chair in a burst of laughter.

“What is the matter?” they asked.

“The primest lark,” returned Tom. “Some of the fellows have been sending Ketch an invitation to sup at Jenkins’s off tripe and onions, and when he arrived there he found it was a hoax, and Mrs. Jenkins turned him out again. That’s what Master Charley must have gone after.”

Hamish turned round. “Where is Charley, by the way?”

“Gone after it, there’s no doubt,” replied Tom. “Here’s his exercise, not finished yet, and his pen left inside the book. Oh yes; that’s where he has gone!”