ed so much himself.

The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual anchorage
at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. Then he roused
himself to say:--"Well, young shaver, what the office for you?--that's
the point! Look you now--are you going home?"

"Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way.
Spit it out, guv'nor!"

Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he
answered:--"You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got
that? You know Aunt M'riar."

"Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did."

Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. "About right you
are, that time!" said he. Not that this was untrue enough to be worth
telling as a falsehood. Polly the barmaid had no niece or nephew that he
knew of, in the early days. "But you could carry a message to her, if
you didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her hooks."

"The widder two pair up at Number Seven? What hooks?"

"She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips."

"Mean she's dead? Carn't you say so, mister?"

"Sharp boy! That's what _she_ is. Dead."

"That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known old Maisie by
repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A wish for some
confirmation of the convict's statement arose in his mind. "How's she to
know it's not a lie?" said he.

"_She'll_ know, fast enough! Say I told you. Say who I am. _She'll_
twig, when you tell her.... Stop a bit!" He was thinking how to
authenticate the death without telling the boy overmuch about himself.
"Look here--I'll tell you what you've got to say. Say her son--old
mother Prichard's son--was just up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her
dead, with his own eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message."

If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself and his own
mother! Perhaps it was some instinctive inwardness that made him glad he
had got his message and could be gone. He made short work of his exit,
saying:--"All right, mister, I'm your man"--and departed after a word in
the bar to Miss Julia:--"Right you are, missis! Don't you let him have
another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety
that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by
commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at
integers--halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are
not hard enough.

Miss Hawkins had