In later years he had been seized with a longing to see Paris. It
chanced that a clerk in the same office, one Peter Flipp, had made
one of a personally conducted party on a visit to the gay city.
The cost of the trip had been but five guineas; but never, surely,
were five guineas so magnificently invested. There was a good deal
of romance about Flipp, and it may be that his accounts were not
entirely trustworthy; but they so fired the imagination of our
friend Benjamin that he had at once begun to hoard up surreptitious
sixpences, with the hope that some day he too might, by some
unforeseen combination of circumstances, be enabled to visit the
enchanted city.
And at last that day had come. Mrs. Quelch, her three children
and her one domestic, had gone to Lowestoft for an Easter outing,
Benjamin and a deaf charwoman, Mrs. Widger, being left in charge
of the family belongings. Benjamin's Easter holidays were limited
to Good Friday and Easter Monday, and, as it seemed hardly worth
while that he should travel so far as Lowestoft for such short
periods, Mrs. Quelch had thoughtfully arranged that he should
spend the former day at the British Museum and the latter at the
Zoological Gardens.
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