She left half an hour before the end of the performance with a girl who accompanied her a short way, talking and laughing noisily.  Along the crowded pavement they were followed by a young man, of whose proximity Miss Sparkes was well aware, though she seemed not to have noticed him—­a slim, narrow-shouldered, high-hatted figure, with the commonest of well-meaning faces set just now in a tremulously eager, pursuing look.  When Polly’s companion made a dart for an omnibus this young man, suddenly red with joy, took a quick step forward, and Polly saw him beside her in an attitude of respectful accost.

“Awfully jolly to meet you like this.”

“Sure you haven’t been waiting?” she asked with good humour.

“Well—­I—­you said you didn’t mind, you know; didn’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t mind!” she laughed.  “If you’ve nothing better to do.  There’s my bus.”

“Oh, I say!  Don’t be in such a hurry.  I was going to ask you”—­he panted—­“if you’d come and have just a little supper, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Nonsense!  You know you can’t afford it.”

“Oh, yes, I can—­quite well.  It would be awfully kind of you.”

Polly laughed a careless acceptance, and they pressed through the roaring traffic of cross-ways towards an electric glare.  In a few minutes they were seated amid plush and marble, mirrors and gilding, in a savoury and aromatic atmosphere.  Nothing more delightful to Polly, who drew off her gloves and made herself thoroughly comfortable, whilst the young man—­his name was Christopher Parish—­nervously scanned a bill of fare.  As his bearing proved, Mr. Parish was not quite at home amid these splendours.  As his voice and costume indicated, he belonged to the great order of minor clerks, and would probably go dinnerless on the morrow to pay for this evening’s festival.  The waiter overawed him, and after a good deal of bungling, with anxious consultation of his companion’s appetite, he ordered something, the nature of which was but dimly suggested to him by its name.  Having accomplished this feat he at once became hilarious, and began to eat large quantities of dry bread.

Quite without false modesty in the matter of eating and drinking, Polly made a hearty supper.  Christopher ate without consciousness of what was before him, and talked ceaselessly of his good fortune in getting a berth at Swettenham’s, the great house of Swettenham Brothers, tea merchants.

“An enormous place—­simply enormous!  What do you think they pay in rent?—­three thousand eight hundred pounds a year!  Could you believe it?  Three thousand eight hundred pounds!  And how many people do you think they employ?  Now just guess, do; just make a shot at it!”

“How do I know?  Two or three hundred, I dessay.”

Christopher’s face shone with triumph.

“One thousand—­three hundred—­and forty-two!  Could you believe it?”

“Oh, I dessay,” Polly replied, with her mouth full.