And wherever can Edie
and Alfie have got to?"

A week or two afterwards Jenny returned to the same smell of cigar, the
same impression of a rich and unusual visitor, but this time the parlor
door gaped to a dark and cold interior, and when Jenny followed Ruby
into the kitchen, he was there, a large florid man, with a big cigar and
heavy mustache and a fur coat open to a snowy collar and shining
tie-pin.

"And this is Jenny, is it?" he said in the cigar voice.

Jenny kissed him much as she would have kissed the walrus he slightly
resembled; then she retreated, finger in mouth, backwards until she
bumped against the table by which she leaned to look at the stranger,
much as she would have looked at a walrus.

Her father came in after a while, and his wife said:

"Mr. Timpany."

"Eh?" said Charlie.

"Mr. Timpany, a friend of father's."

"Oh," said Charlie. "Pleased to meet you," with which he retired to a
chair in a dusky corner and was silent for a long time. At last he
asked:

"Have you been to Paris, Mr.... Tippery? Thrippenny, I should say."

"Timpany, Charlie. I wish you'd listen. Have you got cloth ears? Of
course he's been to Paris, and, for gracious, don't you start your
stories. One would think to hear you talk as you were the only man on
earth as had ever been further than Islington."

"I was in Paris once some years back--on business," Charlie remarked. "I
think Paris is a knockout, as towns go. Not but what I like London
better. Only you see more life in Paris," and he relapsed into silence,
until finally Mr. Timpany said he must be going.

"Who's he?" demanded Mr. Raeburn, when his wife came back from escorting
her visitor to the door.

"I told you once--a friend of father's."

"Ikey sort of a bloke. He hasn't made a mistake coming here, has he? I
thought it was the Duke of Devonshire when I see him sitting there."

"You are an ignorant man," declared Mrs. Raeburn. "Don't you know a
gentleman when you see one? Even if you have lost your own shop and got
to go to work every morning like a common navvy, you can tell a
gentleman still."

"Are you bringing in any more dukes or markisses home to tea?" asked
Charlie. "Because let me know next time and I'll put on a clean pair of
socks."

Mrs. Raeburn did not bring any more dukes or marquises home to tea; but
Mr. Timpany came very often, and Charlie took to returning from work
very punctually, and, though he was always very polite to Mr. Timpan