now haunting Creed.  Was she thinking of that; of her lost youth and comeliness, and her man’s dead love; of the long descent to shadowland; of the other children she had buried; of Hughs in prison; of the girl that had “put a spell on him”; or only of the last precious tugs the tiny lips at rest in the first four-wheeled cab had given at her breast?  Or was she, with a nicer feeling for proportion, reflecting that, had not people been so kind, she might have had to walk behind a funeral provided by the parish?

The old butler could not tell, but he—­whose one desire now, coupled with the wish to die outside a workhouse, was to save enough to bury his own body without the interference of other people—­was inclined to think she must be dwelling on the brighter side of things; and, designing to encourage her, he said:  “Wonderful improvement in these ’ere four-wheel cabs!  Oh dear, yes!  I remember of them when they were the shadders of what they are at the present time of speakin’.”

The seamstress answered in her quiet voice:  “Very comfortable this is.  Sit still, Stanley!” Her little son, whose feet did not reach the floor, was drumming his heels against the seat.  He stopped and looked at her, and the old butler addressed him.

“You’ll a-remember of this occasion,” he said, “when you gets older.”

The little boy turned his black eyes from his mother to him who had spoken last.

“It’s a beautiful wreath,” continued Creed.  “I could smell of it all the way up the stairs.  There’s been no expense spared; there’s white laylock in it—­that’s a class of flower that’s very extravagant.”

A train of thought having been roused too strong for his discretion, he added:  “I saw that young girl yesterday.  She came interrogatin’ of me in the street.”

On Mrs. Hughs’ face, where till now expression had been buried, came such a look as one may see on the face of an owl-hard, watchful, cruel; harder, more cruel, for the softness of the big dark eyes.

“She’d show a better feeling,” she said, “to keep a quiet tongue.  Sit still, Stanley!”

Once more the little boy stopped drumming his heels, and shifted his stare from the old butler back to her who spoke.  The cab, which had seemed to hesitate and start, as though jibbing at something in the road, resumed its ambling pace.  Creed looked through the well-closed window.  There before him, so long that it seemed to have no end, like a building in a nightmare, stretched that place where he did not mean to end his days.  He faced towards the horse again.  The colour had deepened in his nose.  He spoke: 

“If they’d a-give me my last edition earlier, ’stead of sending of it down after that low-class feller’s taken all my customers, that’d make a difference to me o’ two shillin’s at the utmost in the week, and all clear savin’s.”  To these words, dark with hidden meaning, he received no answer save the drumming of the small boy’s heels; and, reverting to the subject he had been distracted from, he murmured:  “She was a-wearin’ of new clothes.”