she. For really this was, for the moment, a greater puzzle to her
than why, being seen, he should send _her_ a message.

Micky let the message stand over, to account for it. "'Cos I did see
him, and I ain't a liar. I see him next door to my great-aunt, as ever
is. Keep along the 'Ammersmith Road past the Plough and Harrow, and so
soon as ever you strike the Amp'shrog, you bear away to the left, and
anybody'll tell you The Pidgings, as soon as look at you. Small 'ouse,
by the river. Kep' by Miss Horkings, now her father's kicked. Female
party." This was due to a vague habit of the speaker's mind, which
divided the opposite sex into two genders, feminine and neuter; the
latter including all those samples, unfortunate enough--or fortunate
enough, according as one looks at it--to present no attractions to
masculine impulses. Micky would never have described his great-aunt as a
female party. She was, though worthy, neuter beyond a doubt.

Aunt M'riar accepted Miss Hawkins, without further analysis. "_She_
don't know me, anyways," said she. "Nor yet your Hyde Park man, as far
as I see. How come he to know my name? Didn't he never tell you?" She
was incredulous about that message.

"He don't know nobody's name, as I knows on. Wot he said to me was a
message to the person of the house at the end o' the Court. Same like
you, missis!"

"And what was the message?"

"I'll tell you that, missis, straight away and no lies." Micky gathered
himself up, and concentrated on a flawless delivery of the message:--"He
said he was a-coming to see his mother; that's what _he_ said--his
_mother_, the old lady upstairs. Providin' she wasn't nobody else! He
didn't say no names. On'y he said if she didn't come from Skillick's she
_was_ somebody else."

"Mrs. Prichard, she came from Skillick's, I know. Because she said so.
That's over three years ago." Aunt M'riar was of a transparent, truthful
nature. If she had been more politic, she would have kept this back.
"Didn't he say nothing else?" she asked.

"Yes, he did, and this here is what it was:--'Tell the person of the
house,' he says, 'to mention my name,' he says. 'Name o' Darvill,' he
says. So I was a-lyin', missis, you see, by a sort o' chance like, when
I said he said no names. 'Cos he _did_. He said his own. Not but what he
goes by the name of Wix."

"What does he want of old Mrs. Prichard now?"

"A screw. Sov'rings, if he can get 'em. Otherwise bobs, if he can't do
no better."