“Yes, yes, my boy, it’s all right!” said the Prophet, hastily.

“Not your boy, if you please, Mr. Vivian,” returned the little inquisitor.  “And have you got the fist tooth?”

“Yes, yes!”

“And the rashes, and the honoured grandmother, and—­”

“I’ve got everything,” cried the Prophet, “every single thing!”

“Because mater familias said I was to make you bring them if I stayed for them all day.”

“Yes, yes, they’re all here—­every one.”

Lady Enid was gazing at the Prophet’s slim form with almost passionate curiosity.  It was evidently a problem to her how he had managed to conceal so many various commodities about his person without altering his shape.  However, she had no time to study the matter, for at this moment the purple ’bus jerked along the kerb, and the voice of the conductor was heard crying,—­

“Pork Butcher’s Rest!  All the way one penny!  Pork—­penny—­all the way—­Butcher’s—­Rest—&sh
y;one—­Pork—­all—­Pork—­penny—­Pork—­Butcher’s—­ Pork—­Rest—­Pork—­penny!”

With a hasty farewell the Prophet, accompanied, and indeed closely clutched, by the little Corona and Capricornus, scrambled fanatically, and not without two or three heavy falls, to the summit of the ’bus, while Lady Enid read the legend printed on it with a smile, ere she turned to walk home, putting two and two together, and thinking, with keen feminine satisfaction, how useless in the long run are all the negatives of man.

In later years, though many memories intervene, the Prophet will never forget his journey to the banks of the Mouse.  Always it seemed very strange to him and dream-like, that everlasting journey upon the purple ’bus, complicated by the chatter of the younger scions of the Malkiel dynasty, and by the shrill cries of the conductor summoning the passers-by to hasten to that place of repose consecrated to the worthy and hard-working individuals who drew their modest incomes from the pig.  The character of the streets changed as the central districts were left behind, and a curious scent, the scent of Suburbia, seemed to float between the tall chimneys in the morose atmosphere.  The purple chariot, which rolled on and on like the chariot of Fate, drew gradually away from the large thoroughfares into mean streets, whose air of dull gentility was for ever autumnal, and the Prophet, on passing some gigantic gasworks, mechanically wondered whether it might not, perhaps, be that monument to whose shadow Malkiel the First had lived and died.  Once, looking up at the black sky, he remarked to the little Capricornus that it was evidently going to rain.

“No, Mr. Vivian,” replied the boy.  “It won’t rain hard this week.  January’s a fine month, but there’ll be heavy floods in March, especially along the banks of the Thames.”

“And in February there’ll be such a lot of scarlet fever in the southern portions of England,” added the little Corona.  “Oh, Corney, just look at that kitty on the airey railings!”