“Have you?”

“You know me, I suppose?”

“Yes, I know you.”

“Unfortunately, there’s only your baby at home.”

Hughs motioned with his cap towards the little model’s room.  “I thought perhaps you’d been to see her,” he said.  His black eyes smouldered; there was more than class resentment in the expression of his face.

Flushing slightly and giving him a keen look, Hilary passed down the stairs without replying.  But Miranda had not followed.  She stood, with one paw delicately held up above the topmost step.

‘I don’t know this man,’ she seemed to say, ‘and I don’t like his looks.’

Hughs grinned.  “I never hurt a dumb animal,” he said; “come on, tykie!”

Stimulated by a word she had never thought to hear, Miranda descended rapidly.

‘He meant that for impudence,’ thought Hilary as he walked away.

“Westminister, sir?  Oh dear!”

A skinny trembling hand was offering him a greenish newspaper.

“Terrible cold wind for the time o’ year!”

A very aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose and long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out change for sixpence.

“I seem to know your face,” said Hilary.

“Oh dear, yes.  You deals with this ’ere shop—­the tobacco department.  I’ve often seen you when you’ve a-been agoin’ in.  Sometimes you has the Pell Mell off o’ this man here.”  He jerked his head a trifle to the left, where a younger man was standing armed with a sheaf of whiter papers.  In that gesture were years of envy, heart-burning, and sense of wrong.  ‘That’s my paper,’ it seemed to say, ’by all the rights of man; and that low-class fellow sellin’ it, takin’ away my profits!’

“I sells this ’ere Westminister.  I reads it on Sundays—­it’s a gentleman’s paper, ‘igh-class paper—­notwithstandin’ of its politics.  But, Lor’, sir, with this ‘ere man a-sellin’ the Pell Mell”—­lowering his voice, he invited Hilary to confidence—­“so many o’ the gentry takes that; an’ there ain’t too many o’ the gentry about ‘ere—­I mean, not o’ the real gentry—­that I can afford to ’ave ’em took away from me.”

Hilary, who had stopped to listen out of delicacy, had a flash of recollection.  “You live in Hound Street?”

The old man answered eagerly:  “Oh dear!  Yes, sir—­No. 1, name of Creed.  You’re the gentleman where the young person goes for to copy of a book!”

“It’s not my book she copies.”

“Oh no; it’s an old gentleman; I know ‘im.  He come an’ see me once.  He come in one Sunday morning.  ‘Here’s a pound o’ tobacca for you!’ ’e says.  ‘You was a butler,’ ’e says.  ‘Butlers!’ ’e says, ’there’ll be no butlers in fifty years.’  An’ out ’e goes.  Not quite”—­he put a shaky hand up to his head—­“not quite—­oh dear!”

“Some people called Hughs live in your house, I think?”

“I rents my room off o’ them.  A lady was a-speakin’ to me yesterday about ’em; that’s not your lady, I suppose, sir?”