all the pretty things gone in a minute! So can an
Englishman. Your seventy pounds! You will come again to me for seventy
pounds, I think." In her energy she had acted the bull, and had
exhibited her idea of the dashing, the smashing and the crashing, by the
motion of her head and the waving of her hands.

"And you decline to say anything about the seventy pounds?" said
Doodles, resolving that his courage should not desert him.

Whereupon the divine Sophie laughed. "Ha, ha, ha! I see you have not got
on any gloves, Captain Booddle."

"Gloves; no. I don't wear gloves."

"Nor your uncle with the leetle property in Warwickshire? Captain
Clavering, he wears a glove. He is a handy man." Doodles stared at her,
understanding nothing of this. "Perhaps it is in your waistcoat pocket,"
and she approached him fearlessly, as though she were about to deprive
him of his watch.

"I don't know what you mean," said he, retreating.

"Ah, you are not a handy man, like my friend the other captain, so you
had better go away. Yes; you had better go to Warwickshire. In
Warwickshire, I suppose, they make ready for your Michaelmas dinners.
You have four months to get fat. Suppose you go away and get fat."

Doodles understood nothing of her sarcasm, but began to perceive that he
might as well take his departure. The woman was probably a lunatic, and
his friend Archie had no doubt been grossly deceived when he was sent to
her for assistance. He had some faint idea that the seventy pounds might
be recovered from such a madwoman, but in the recovery his friend would
be exposed, and he saw that the money must be abandoned. At any rate he
had not been soft enough to dispose of any more treasure.

"Good morning, ma'am," he said, very curtly.

"Good morning to you, Captain Booddle. Are you coming again another
day?"

"Not that I know of, ma'am."

"You are very welcome to stay away. I like your friend the better. Tell
him to come and be handy with his glove. As for you--suppose you go to
the leetle property."

Then Captain Boodle went, and, as soon as he had made his way out into
the open street, stood still and looked around him, that by the aspect
of things familiar to his eyes he might be made certain that he was in a
world with which he was conversant. While in that room with the spy he
had ceased to remember that he was in London--his own London, within a
mile of his club, within a mile of Tattersall's. He had been, as it
were, remove