an near her.

'How do you mean to get home?' asked Crewe presently. Nancy explained
that all her party were to meet on the other side of the river.

'Oh, then, there's plenty of time. When you've had enough of this kind
of thing we can strike off into the quiet streets. If you were a man,
which I'm glad you're not, I should say I was choking for a glass of
beer.'

'Say it, and look for a place where you can quench your thirst.'

'It must be a place, then, where you can come in as well. You don't
drink beer, of course, but we can get lemonade and that kind of thing.
No wonder we get thirsty; look up there.'

Following the direction of his eyes, Nancy saw above the heads of the
multitude a waving dust-canopy, sent up by myriad tramplings on the
sun-scorched streets. Glare of gas illumined it in the foreground;
beyond, it dimmed all radiance like a thin fog.

'We might cut across through Soho,' he pursued, 'and get among the
restaurants. Take my arm again. Only a bit of cross-fighting, and we
shall be in the crowd going the other way. Did you do physics at school?
Remember about the resultant of forces? Now _we_'re a force tending
to the right, and the crowd is a force making for straight on; to find
the--'

His hat was knocked over his eyes, and the statement of the problem
ended in laughter.

With a good deal of difficulty they reached one of the southward byways;
and thenceforth walking was unimpeded.

'You know that I call myself Luckworth Crewe,' resumed Nancy's companion
after a short silence.

'Of course I do.'

'Well, the fact is, I've no right to either of the names. I thought I'd
just tell you, for the fun of the thing; I shouldn't talk about it to
any one else that I know. They tell me I was picked up on a doorstep
in Leeds, and the wife of a mill-hand adopted me. Their name was Crewe.
They called me Tom, but somehow it isn't a name I care for, and when I
was grown up I met a man called Luckworth, who was as kind as a father
to me, and so I took his name in place of Tom. That's the long and short
of it.'

Nancy looked a trifle disconcerted.

'You won't think any worse of me, because I haven't a name of my own?'

'Why should I? It isn't your fault.'

'No. But I'm not the kind of man to knuckle under. I think myself just
as good as anybody else I'll knock the man down that sneers at me; and
I won't thank anybody for pitying me; that's the sort of chap I am.
And I'm going to have a big fortune o