As for his other companions of the dinner-table he was obliged to admit that they displayed an admirable delicacy.  After Mrs. Downey’s revelation not one of them had asked him what he had been doing those four weeks.  Spinks had a theory, which he kept to himself.  Old Rickets had been having a high old time.  He had eloped with a barmaid or an opera girl.  For those four weeks, he had no doubt, Rickets had been gloriously, ruinously, on the loose.  Mrs. Downey’s speculations had taken the same turn.  Mr. Rickman’s extraordinary request that all his clean linen should be forwarded to him at once had set her mind working; it suggested a young man living in luxury beyond his means.  Mrs. Downey’s fancy kindled and blushed by turns as it followed him into a glorious or disreputable unknown.  Whatever the adventures of those four weeks she felt that they were responsible for his awful state of impecuniosity.  And yet she desired to keep him.  “There is something about him,” said Mrs. Downey to Miss Roots, and paused searching for the illuminating word; “something that goes to your heart without ’is knowing it.”

She had found it, the nameless, ineluctable charm.

And so for those last days the Dinner became a high funereal ceremony, increasing in valedictory splendour that proclaimed unmistakably, “Mr. Rickman is going.”

In a neighbouring street he had found a room, cheap and passably clean, and (failing a financial miracle worked on his behalf) he would move into it to-morrow.  He was going, now that he would have given anything to stay.

In the dining-room after dinner, Spinks with a dejected countenance, sat guarding for the last time the sacred silence of Rickman.  They had finished their coffee, when the door that let out the maid with empty cups let in Miss Bishop, Miss Bramble and Miss Walker.

First came Miss Bishop; she advanced in a side-long and embarrassed manner, giggling, and her face for once was as red as her hair.  She carried a little wooden box which with an unaccustomed shyness she asked him to accept.  The sliding lid disclosed a dozen cedar pencils side by side, their points all ready sharpened, also a card with the inscription:  “Mr. Rickman, with best wishes from Ada Bishop.”  At one corner was a date suggesting that the gift marked an epoch; at the other the letters P.T.O.  The reverse displayed this legend, “If you ever want any typing done, I’ll always do it for you at 6d. a thou. Only don’t let on. Yours, A.B.”  Now Miss Bishop’s usual charge was, as he knew, a shilling per thousand.

“Gentlemen,” said she, explaining away her modest offering, “always like anything that saves them trouble.”  At this point, Miss Bishop, torn by a supreme giggle, vanished violently from the scene.

Mr. Rickman smiled sadly, but his heart remained as before.  He had not loved Miss Bishop.

Next came Miss Bramble with her gift mysteriously concealed in silver paper.  “All brain-workers,” said Miss Bramble, “suffered from cold feet.”  So she had just knitted him a pair of socks—­“bed-socks” (in a whisper), “that would help to keep him warm.”  Her poor old eyes were scarlet, not so much from knitting the bed-socks, as from contemplating the terrible possibility of his needing them.