“I didn’t really expect you,” said the lady, always with a slight Cockney accent.  “But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the vanishing trick just because you couldn’t come.  So in I went, by myself.”

“Why didn’t you expect me?” he asked diffidently.

“Well,” she said, “Mr. Farll being dead, I knew you’d have a lot to do, besides being upset like.”

“Oh yes,” he said quickly, feeling that he must be more careful; for he had quite forgotten that Mr. Farll was dead.  “How did you know?”

“How did I know!” she cried.  “Well, I like that!  Look anywhere!  It’s all over London, has been these six hours.”  She pointed to a ragged man who was wearing an orange-coloured placard by way of apron.  On the placard was printed in large black letters:  “Sudden death of Priam Farll in London.  Special Memoir.”  Other ragged men, also wearing aprons, but of different colours, similarly proclaimed by their attire that Priam Farll was dead.  And people crowding out of St. George’s Hall were continually buying newspapers from these middlemen of tidings.

He blushed.  It was singular that he could have walked even half-an-hour in Central London without noticing that his own name flew in the summer breeze of every street.  But so it had been.  He was that sort of man.  Now he understood how Duncan Farll had descended upon Selwood Terrace.

“You don’t mean to say you didn’t see those posters?” she demanded.

“I didn’t,” he said simply.

“That shows how you must have been thinking!” said she.  “Was he a good master?”

“Yes, very good,” said Priam Farll with conviction.

“I see you’re not in mourning.”

“No.  That is——­”

“I don’t hold with mourning myself,” she proceeded.  “They say it’s to show respect.  But it seems to me that if you can’t show your respect without a pair of black gloves that the dye’s always coming off...  I don’t know what you think, but I never did hold with mourning.  It’s grumbling against Providence, too!  Not but what I think there’s a good deal too much talk about Providence.  I don’t know what you think, but——­”

“I quite agree with you,” he said, with a warm generous smile which sometimes rushed up and transformed his face before he was aware of the occurrence.

And she smiled also, gazing at him half confidentially.  She was a little woman, stoutish—­indeed, stout; puffy red cheeks; a too remarkable white cotton blouse; and a crimson skirt that hung unevenly; grey cotton gloves; a green sunshade; on the top of all this the black hat with red roses.  The photograph in Leek’s pocket-book must have been taken in the past.  She looked quite forty-five, whereas the photograph indicated thirty-nine and a fraction.  He gazed down at her protectively, with a good-natured appreciative condescension.

“I suppose you’ll have to be going back again soon, to arrange things like,” she said.  It was always she who kept the conversation afloat.