Jay had been thinking a little about Mr. Russell, not much.  She had been wondering who he was.  The Family’s friends and relations were always much talked of in the Family, and much invited, and much met.  Mr. Russell had not been among them when Jay had last known the Family.  An idea was in her mind that he might be a private detective, engaged by the Family to seek out their fugitive young relation.  Mr. Russell had plainly alluded to a search.  Jay had no experience of private detectives, but she thought it quite possible that they might disguise themselves with rather low foreheads, and rather frowning eyes, and shut thin mouths, and shut thin expressions.  She hoped that she would see him to-day.  An hour ago a young man with a spotty complexion and bulging eyes like a rabbit’s had handed her a note with his threepence, asking for a “two-and-a-half” in a lovelorn voice.  She handed him back his halfpenny and his unopened note at once, saying, “Your change, sir,” in a kind, absent-minded voice.  I am afraid an incident like this is always a little exciting, though I admit it ought to be insulting.  That suggestive fare made Jay hope more and more that she would meet Mr. Russell to-day.  I don’t exactly know why, except that sentimentality is an infectious complaint.

Mr. Russell got happily into the ’bus.  He made the worst entrance possible.  His hat slipped crooked, he left one leg behind on the road, and only retrieved it with the help of the conductor.  Jay welcomed him with a nod that was almost a bow, a remnant of her unprofessional past.

“Told you I’d come in this ’bus again,” said Mr. Russell, sitting down in the left-hand seat next to the door.  I really don’t know what would have happened if that seat had been occupied.  I suppose Mr. Russell would have sat upon the occupier.

“A good many people like this service,” said Jay; “it is considered very convenient.  How is your search going?”

“It hasn’t begun yet,” said Mr. Russell.  “We haven’t got within three hundred miles of the House we’re looking for.”

“You know more or less where it is, then?” asked Jay, who sometimes wanted to know this herself.

“I do know, but I don’t know how I know, nor what I know.”

“How funny that you—­an Older and Wiser Man—­should feel that sort of knowledge,” said Jay.  As an afterthought she called him Sir.

The ’bus grew fuller, and only Jay’s bell punctured the silence that followed.  A lady asked Jay to “set her down at Charing Cross Post Office.”  “The ’bus stops there automatically, Madam,” said Jay, and the lady told her not to be impertinent.

Jay seemed a little subdued after this, and it was only after she had stood for a minute or two on her platform in silence that she said to Mr. Russell, “London seems dead to-day, doesn’t it?  Not even fog, only a lifeless light.  What’s the use of daylight in London to-day?  You know, I don’t live in London.”