I pressed a five-pound note into her hand and passed on.  She ran after me, terror on her face.

“I daren’t take it, sir; they would say I had stolen it, and I should be locked up.  No one would believe a gentleman had given it to me.”

She trembled, overwhelmed by the colossal fortune that might, and yet might not, be hers.  I sympathised, but not having the change in gold, I could do no more than listen to an incoherent tale of misery, which did not aid the solution of the problem.  It was manifestly impossible to take back the note; and yet if she retained it she would be subjected to scandalous indignities.  What was to be done?  I turned my eyes towards Piccadilly and beheld a policeman.  A page wearing the name of a milliner’s shop on his cap whisked past me.  I stopped him and slipped a shilling into his hand.

“Will you ask that policeman to come to me?”

The boy tore down the street and told the policeman and followed him up to me, eager for amusement.

“What has the woman been doing, sir?” asked the policeman.

“Nothing,” said I.  “I have given her a five-pound note.”

“What for, sir?” he asked.

“To further my pursuit of the eumoirous,” said I, whereat he gaped stolidly; “but, be that as it may, I have given it her as a free gift, and she is afraid to present it anywhere lest she should be charged with theft.  Will you kindly accompany her to a shop, where she can change it, and vouch for her honesty?”

The policeman, who seemed to form the lowest opinion of my intellect, said he didn’t know a shop on his beat where they could change it.  The boy whistled.  The woman held the box of matches in one hand, and in the other the note, fluttering in the breeze.  Idlers paused and looked on.  The policeman grew authoritative and bade them pass along.  They crowded all the more.  My position was becoming embarrassing.  At last the boy, remembering the badge of honour on his cap, undertook to change the note at the hatter’s at the corner of the street.  So, having given the note to the boy and bidden the policeman follow him to see fair play, and encouraged the woman to follow the policeman, I resumed my walk down Sackville Street.

But what a pother about a simple act of charity!  In order to repeat it habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to my person, which would be as agreeable as the continuous escort of a jackdaw and a yak.

Poor Latimer is having a dreadful time.  Apparently my ten thousand pounds have vanished like a snowflake on the river of liabilities.  How he is to repay me he does not know.  He wishes he had not yielded to temptation and had allowed himself to be honestly hammered.  Then he could have taken his family to sing in the streets with a quiet conscience.

“My dear fellow,” said I through the telephone this morning.  “What are ten thousand pounds to me?”