Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 173: what you’re looking at

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

156 REYNOLDS’ WORKS present one, Rosa —I set off to pay the Marshalls a visit at Dover. By them I was kindly welcomed. I returned Kate the money she had lent me, and when we were alone together, she questioned me closely as to what I was doing, particularly how I came to be so well dressed and had such a command of funds. I evaded her queries at first, and she again fell into that humour of good-tempered bantering in which she is apt to indulge, at the same time hinting her suspicion that I had found some wealthy lover. Singular as it may seem — strangely idiosyncratic as it may appear —TI preferred proclaiming myself what [ really was than resting under the suspicion of being what I was not, and I accordingly told Kate all I had suffered, — my wretched wanderings without food or shelter through the streets of the metropolis, and the desperate measures into which I had been forced. She wept in sympathy for the miseries and privations I had gone through, and appeared to admire me rather than otherwise for the course I had chosen. To my annoyance, I found that she even told her parents and her sisters all that had happened, and they thought no more of it than she did, or at least they thought none the worse of me. , ‘‘T remained for about a fortnight at Dover, and when I was about to take my departure, Kate offered me some of her beautiful pigeons, observing that it would prove an amusement to attend to them, and that by some means or another they might even become useful. I told her that I did not possibly see how this latter portion of her remark could be realized, when she said, ‘ My dear Elizabeth, if you continue in your present career, which I am sure you will, — for you have taken a good leaf out of, Don Diego Christoval’ s book, — you are certain sooner or later to get yourself into trouble, from which one of these winged messengers might possibly rescue you. For instance, if at any time you wished to prove that you were at Dover at a certain hour when others may swear you were in London, send off a billet containing the necessary particulars to me, and it can be managed.’ I accepted four of the pigeons, and brought them with me to this cottage, where I have them now. ‘Some months passed, during which I lived comfortably and happily enough, but in a sort of reckless and desperate Gomiecbooks