She led the conversation with hard, accustomed ease.  When I say ‘hard’ I do not in the least mean unsympathetic.  But her sympathetic quality was toughened by excessive usage, like the hand of a charwoman.  She spoke of the vagaries of the Town Hall clock, the health of Mr Brindley’s children, the price of coal, the incidence of the annual wakes, the bankruptcy of the draper next door, and her own sciatica, all in the same tone of metallic tender solicitude.  Mr Brindley adopted an entirely serious attitude towards her.  If I had met him there and nowhere else I should have taken him for a dignified mediocrity, little better than a fool, but with just enough discretion not to give himself away.  I said nothing.  I was shy.  I always am shy in a bar.  Out of her cold, cold roving eye Miss Brett watched me, trying to add me up and not succeeding.  She must have perceived, however, that I was not like a fish in water.

There was a pause in the talk, due, I think, to Miss Annie Brett’s preoccupation with what was going on between Miss Slaney, the ordinary barmaid, and her commercial traveller.  The commercial traveller, if he was one, was reading something from a newspaper to Miss Slaney in an indistinct murmur, and with laughter in his voice.

‘By the way,’ said Mr Brindley, ’you used to know Simon Fuge, didn’t you?’

‘Old Simon Fuge!’ said Miss Brett.  ’Yes; after the brewery company took the Blue Bell at Cauldon over from him, I used to be there.  He would come in sometimes.  Such a nice queer old man!’

‘I mean the son,’ said Mr Brindley.

‘Oh yes,’ she answered.  ‘I knew young Mr Simon too.’  A slight hesitation, and then:  ‘Of course!’ Another hesitation.  ‘Why?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Brindley.  ‘Only he’s dead.’

‘You don’t mean to say he’s dead?’ she exclaimed.

‘Day before yesterday, in Italy,’ said Mr Brindley ruthlessly.

Miss Annie Brett’s manner certainly changed.  It seemed almost to become natural and unecstatic.

‘I suppose it will be in the papers?’ she ventured.

‘It’s in the London paper.’

‘Well I never!’ she muttered.

’A long time, I should think, since he was in this part of the world,’ said Mr Brindley.  ‘When did you last see him?’

He was exceedingly skilful, I considered.

She put the back of her hand over her mouth, and bending her head slightly and lowering her eyelids, gazed reflectively at the counter.

‘It was once when a lot of us went to Ilam,’ she answered quietly.  ‘The St Luke’s lot, you know.’

‘Oh!’ cried Mr Brindley, apparently startled.  ‘The St Luke’s lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘How came he to go with you?’

‘He didn’t go with us.  He was there—­stopping there, I suppose.’

‘Why, I believe I remember hearing something about that,’ said Mr Brindley cunningly.  ‘Didn’t he take you out in a boat?’