The walk to Fullalove Alley was all too short for Jem Hardy.  Miss Nugent stepped along with the air of a martyr anxious to get to the stake and have it over, and she answered in monosyllables when her companion pointed out the beauties of the night.

A bitter east wind blew up the road and set her yearning for the joys of Mr. Wilks’s best room.  “It’s very cold,” she said, shivering.

Hardy assented, and reluctantly quickened his pace to keep step with hers.  Miss Nugent with her chin sunk in a fur boa looked neither to the right nor the left, and turning briskly into the alley, turned the handle of Mr. Wilks’s door and walked in, leaving her companion to follow.

The steward, who was smoking a long pipe over the fire, looked round in alarm.  Then his expression changed, and he rose and stammered out a welcome.  Two minutes later Miss Nugent, enthroned in the best chair with her toes on the fender, gave her faithful subject a free pardon and full permission to make hot coffee.

“And don’t you ever try and deceive me again, Sam,” she said, as she sipped the comforting beverage.

“No, miss,” said the steward, humbly.  “I’ve ’ad a lesson.  I’ll never try and Shanghai anybody else agin as long as I live.”

After this virtuous sentiment he sat and smoked placidly, with occasional curious glances divided between his two visitors.  An idle and ridiculous idea, which occurred to him in connection with them, was dismissed at once as too preposterous for a sensible steward to entertain.

“Mrs. Kingdom well?” he inquired.

“Quite well,” said the girl.  “If you take me home, Sam, you shall see her, and be forgiven by her, too.”

“Thankee, miss,” said the gratified steward.

“And what about your foot, Wilks?” said Hardy, somewhat taken aback by this arrangement.

“Foot, sir?” said the unconscious Mr. Wilks; “wot foot?”

“Why, the bad one,” said Hardy, with a significant glance.

“Ho, that one?” said Mr. Wilks, beating time and waiting further revelations.

“Do you think you ought to use it much?” inquired Hardy.

Mr. Wilks looked at it, or, to be more exact, looked at both of them, and smiled weakly.  His previous idea recurred to him with renewed force now, and several things in the young man’s behaviour, hitherto disregarded, became suddenly charged with significance.  Miss Nugent looked on with an air of cynical interest.

“Better not run any risk,” said Hardy, gravely.  “I shall be very pleased to see Miss Nugent home, if she will allow me.”

“What is the matter with it?” inquired Miss Nugent, looking him full in the face.

Hardy hesitated.  Diplomacy, he told himself, was one thing; lying another.  He passed the question on to the rather badly used Mr. Wilks.

“Matter with it?” repeated that gentleman, glaring at him reproachfully.  “It’s got shootin’ pains right up it.  I suppose it was walking miles and miles every day in London, looking for the cap’n, was too much for it.”