I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.

“So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?” said I. “I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?”

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage lengthen very much.

“I am sorry for it, too,” said my aunt, rubbing her nose. “I have had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.”

Before I could ask why, she told me.

“I am convinced,” said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, “that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,” said my aunt, with emphasis, “there was one this afternoon at four o’clock. A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey!”

I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.

“It was a donkey,” said my aunt; “and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house.” This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. “If there is any donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another’s, that,” said my aunt, striking the table, “is the animal!”

Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.

Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very high up—whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know—and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.

“I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,” said my aunt, “and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.”

“Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?” I hinted.

“Certainly not,” returned my aunt. “It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.”