Cuckoo’s heart gave a great thump, and then for an appreciable fragment of time stopped beating.  She muttered a bad word under her breath and had an impulse to flee as from an enemy.  She did not flee, but stood still like one condemned, while the old man stolidly approached with his menagerie.  When he reached her she lifted her head and looked him in the face.  The little dogs were jumping to reach his hands.  Evidently they loved him.

“I say,” Cuckoo said huskily.

The old gentleman stopped, lifted a rat from his shoulder, placed it on his breast, like a man who arranged his necktie, clicked his tongue against his teeth, and remarked: 

“Parding, lydy.”

Cuckoo swallowed.  She felt as if she had a ball in her throat shifting up and down.

“I say,” she repeated.  “You buy toy dogs, eh?”

“I buys ’em and I sells ’em,” answered the old man, with a large accent on the conjunction.  “Buys ’em dear and sells ’em cheap.  There’s a wy to mike a living, lydy!”

His small eyes twinkled with humour as he spoke.

Cuckoo swallowed again.  The ball in her throat was getting larger.

“Want to buy one this morning?” she asked.  “A show little dog, eh?”

She choked.

The old man did not appear to notice it.  He looked at her with sharp consideration.

“Oh, you means selling!” he remarked.  “Where is it, then?”

“What?”

“The show little dawg?”

Cuckoo gulped out her address.  All this time the old man had been summing her up, and drawing his own conclusions from her thin figure and haggard face.  He scented a possible bargain.

“Trot along, lydy,” he said, turning on his heels with all his little dogs in commotion.  “Trot along.  I’m with yer.”

Cuckoo heard muffled drums of a dead-march as she walked.  She, who had lived a life so shameless, shivered with shame at the thought of what she was going to do.  Her treachery laid her out in its winding-sheet.  The old man tried to entertain her, as they went, by chatting about his profession, declaiming the merits of his rats, and spreading before her mind a verbal panorama of the canine life that had defiled through his changeful existence.  Cuckoo did not hear a word—­they turned into the Marylebone Road.  She walked slower and slower, yet never had the street in which she lived seemed so short.  At length the iron gate of number 400 was reached.  Cuckoo stopped.

“In ’ere, lydy?” said the old man.

She nodded, unable to speak.  He turned in with his crowd of pattering dogs, and proceeded jauntily up the narrow path.  Cuckoo followed slowly and with a furtive step.  She longed to open the front door, let him in, and then run away herself.  Anywhere, anywhere, only to be away, out of sight and hearing of the cruel scene that was coming.

Now they were on the doorstep.  The old man waited.  She fumbled for her latchkey, found it, thrust it into the door.  Instantly the shrill bark of Jessie was heard.  Cuckoo’s guilty shining eyes met the twinkling eyes of the old man.