“H’m! I suppose that’s why
I couldn’t get a word out of Mrs. Clover.
Have the door mended, Mrs. Bubb, and charge me with
it. Got anything to drink handy?”
“That I ’aven’t, Mr. Gammon, except
water.”
Gammon looked at his watch.
“Why, it’s only just half-past eleven.
Hanged if I didn’t think it was past midnight!
I must go round and get a drop of something.”
When he came back from quenching his thirst the house
was in darkness. He strode the familiar ascent,
and by Polly’s door (barricaded inside with
the chest of drawers) hummed a mirthful strain.
As he jumped into bed the events of the evening all
at once struck him in such a comical light that he
uttered a great guffaw, and for the next ten minutes
he lay under the bedclothes shaking with laughter.
THE NOSE OF THE TREFOYLES
At noon next day a cab drove up to Mrs. Bubb’s
house; from it alighted Miss Sparkes, who, with the
help of the cabman, brought downstairs a tin box,
a wooden box, two bandboxes, and three newspaper bundles.
With no one did she exchange a word of farewell; the
Cheesemans’ were out, the landlady and Moggie
kept below stairs. So Polly turned her back upon
Kennington Road, and shook the dust thereof from her
feet for ever.
Willingly she had accepted a proposal that she should
share the room of her friend Miss Waghorn, who was
to be married in a month’s time to Mr. Nibby,
and did not mind a little inconvenience. The room
was on the third floor of a house at the north end
of Shaftesbury Avenue; it measured twelve feet by
fourteen. When Polly’s bandboxes had been
thrust under the bed and her larger luggage built up
in a corner, there was nice standing room both for
her and Miss Waghorn. The house contained ten
rooms in all, and its population (including seven
children) amounted to twenty-three. In this warm
weather the atmosphere within doors might occasionally
be a trifle close, but Shaftesbury Avenue is a fine
broad street, and has great advantages of situation.
To Mr. Gammon’s casual inquiry, Mrs. Bubb replied
that she neither knew nor cared whither Polly had
betaken herself. Himself having no great curiosity
in the matter, and being much absorbed in his endeavour
to obtain an engagement with the house of Quodling,
he let Polly slip from his mind for a few days, until
one morning came a letter from her. Positively,
and to his vast surprise, a letter addressed to him
by Miss Sparkes, with her abode fully indicated in
the usual place. True, the style of the epistle
was informal. It began:
“You took advantage of me because there wasn’t
a man in the house to take my part, as I don’t
call that grinning monkey of a Cheeseman a man at
all. If you like to call where I am now, I shall
have the pleasure of introducing you to somebody that
will give you the good hiding you deserve for being
a coward and a brute.
