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You may imagine the comfort she got from her friends, and how West
Kensington and Notting Hill and Hampstead, the literary suburbs, those
decent penitentiaries of a once Bohemian calling, hummed with the
business, Her 'Men'--as a charming literary lady she had, of course, an
organised corps--were immensely excited, and were sympathetic;
helpfully energetic, suggestive, alert, as their ideals of their various
dispositions required them to be. "Any news of Jessie?" was the pathetic
opening of a dozen melancholy but interesting conversations. To her Men
she was not perhaps so damp as she was to her women friends, but in a
quiet way she was even more touching. For three days, Wednesday that is,
Thursday, and Friday, nothing was heard of the fugitives. It was known
that Jessie, wearing a patent costume with buttonup skirts, and mounted
on a diamond frame safety with Dunlops, and a loofah covered saddle,
had ridden forth early in the morning, taking with her about two pounds
seven shillings in money, and a grey touring case packed, and there,
save for a brief note to her stepmother,--a declaration of independence,
it was said, an assertion of her Ego containing extensive and very
annoying quotations from "A Soul Untrammelled," and giving no definite
intimation of her plans--knowledge ceased. That note was shown to few,
and then only in the strictest confidence.
But on Friday evening late came a breathless Man Friend, Widgery, a
correspondent of hers, who had heard of her trouble among the first. He
had been touring in Sussex,--his knapsack was still on his back,--and
he testified hurriedly that at a place called Midhurst, in the bar of an
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