I had always been on excellent terms with Mr.Petulengro, but I reflected that people might be excellent friends when they met occasionally in the street, or on the heath, or in the wood; but that these very people when living together in a house, to say nothing of a tent, might quarrel.

I reflected, moreover, that Mr.Petulengro had a wife.

I had always, it is true, been a great favourite with Mrs.Petulengro, who had frequently been loud in her commendation of the young rye, as she called me, and his turn of conversation; but this was at a time when I stood in need of nothing, lived under my parents' roof, and only visited at the tents to divert and to be diverted.

The times were altered, and I was by no means certain that Mrs.Petulengro, when she should discover that I was in need both of shelter and subsistence, might not alter her opinion both with respect to the individual and what he said--stigmatizing my conversation as saucy discourse, and myself as a scurvy companion; and that she might bring over her husband to her own way of thinking, provided, indeed, he should need any conducting.

I therefore, though without declaring my reasons, declined the offer of Mr.Petulengro, and presently, after shaking him by the hand, bent again my course towards the Great City.
I crossed the river at a bridge considerably above that hight of London; for, not being acquainted with the way, I missed the turning which should have brought me to the latter.