it
_was_ a friend o' mine, mister, so I tell you, and no lies! Miss
Rosalind Nightingale. I see her in the fog round Piccadilly way....
No, no lies at all! Told me her name of her own accord, and went
indoors." Julius would have tried to get to the bottom of this if he
had not been so taken aback by it, even at the cost of more pence for
conversation; but by the time he had found that his informant had
certainly read the paragraph, or at least mastered Sally's name right,
the boy had vanished. Of course, he was the boy with the gap in his
teeth that she had seen in the fog when Colonel Lund was dying. We
can only hope that his shrewdness and prudence in worldly matters
have since brought him the success they deserve, as his disappearance
was final.

Even the Twopenny Tube was too slow for Julius Bradshaw, so mad was
he with impatience to get to Georgiana Terrace. When he got there,
and went upstairs two steps at a time, and "I say, Tishy dearest, look
at _this_!" on his lips, he was met half-way by his young wife, also
extending a newspaper, and "Paggy, just _fancy_ what's happened! Look
at _this_!"

They were so wild with excitement that they refused food--at least,
when it took the form of second helpings--and when the banquet was
over Laetitia could do nothing but walk continually about the room with
gleaming eyes and a flushed face waiting furiously for the post; for
she was sure it would bring her a letter from Sally or her mother.
And she was right, for the rush to the street door that followed the
postman's knock resulted firstly in denunciations of an intransitive
letter-box nobody but a fool would ever have tried to stuff all those
into, and secondly in a pounce by Laetitia on Sally's own handwriting.

"You may just as well read it upstairs comfortably, Tish," says
Julius, meanly affecting stoicism now that it is perfectly clear--for
the arrival of the letter practically shows it--that nobody is
incapacitated by the accident. "Come along up!"

"All right!" says his wife. "Why, mine's written in pencil! Who's
yours from?"

"I haven't opened it yet. Come along. Don't be a goose!" This was a
little cheap stoicism, worth deferring satisfaction of curiosity three
minutes for.

"Whose handwriting is it?" She goes on devouring, intensely absorbed,
though she speaks.

"It looks like the doctor's."

"Of course! You'll see directly.... All right, I'm coming!"

Take your last look at the Julius Bradshaws, as