“I want to learn his views on this strange faculty of prophecy.  Has it ever occurred to you that among all our immense acquaintance we don’t number a single prophet?”

“One can’t know everybody, Hennessey.  And I believe that prophets always spring from the lower classes.  The line must be drawn somewhere even in these days.”

“Why not draw it at millionaires then?”

“I should like to.  Somethin’ will have to be done.  If the nobodies continue to go everywhere the very few somebodies that are left will soon go nowhere.

“Perhaps they do go nowhere.  Perhaps that is why we have never met a prophet.”

Mrs. Merillia looked up sharply, with her wide, cheerful mouth set awry in a shrewd smile that seemed to say “So ho!” She recognised a strange, new note of profound, though not arrogant, self-respect in her grandson.

“Prophets,” Hennessey added more gently, “have always been inclined to dwell in the wilderness.”

“But where can you find a wilderness in these days?” asked Mrs. Merillia, still smiling.  “Even Hammersmith is becomin’ quite a fashionable neighbourhood.  And you say that the Almanac man lives in Shaftesbury Avenue, only half a minute from Piccadilly Circus.”

“My dear grannie,” he corrected her, “I said he received letters there.  I don’t know where he lives.”

“How are you goin’ to find him then?”

“I shall call this afternoon at eleven hundred Z.”

“To see if he has run in for a postcard!  And what sort of person do you expect him to be?”

“Something quite out of the common.”

Mrs. Merillia screwed up her eyes doubtfully.

“I hope you won’t be disappointed.  How many editions have there been of the Almanac?”

“Seventy yearly editions.”

“Then Malkiel must be a very old man.”

“But this Mr. Malkiel is Malkiel the Second.”

“One of a dynasty!  That alters the case.  Perhaps he’s a young man about town.  There are young men about town, I believe, who have addresses at clubs and libraries, and sleep on doorsteps, or in the Park.  Well, Hennessey, I see you are getting fidgety.  You had better be off.  Buy me some roses for my room on your way home.  I’m expectin’ someone to have tea with the poor victim of prophecy this afternoon.”

The Prophet kissed his grandmother, put on his overcoat and stepped into the square.

It was a bright, frosty, genial day, and he resolved to walk to
Jellybrand’s Library.

London was looking quite light-hearted in the dry, cold air, which set a bloom even upon the cheeks of the ambassadors who were about, and caused the butcher boys to appear like peonies.  The crossing-sweepers swept nothing vigorously, and were rewarded with showers of pence from pedestrians delighting in the absence of mud.  Crystal as some garden of an eternal city seemed the green Park, wrapped in its frosty mantle embroidered with sunbeams.  Even the drivers of the “growlers” were moderately cheerful—­a very rare occurrence—­and the blind man of Piccadilly smiled as he roared along the highway, striking the feet of the charitable with the wand which was the emblem of his profession.