The woman made me another curtsey.  ’You forget your exalted position, Mrs. Gudgeon,’ said Cyril; ’when a mystic goddess-queen is so condescending as to curtsey she should be careful not to bend too low.  Man is a creature who can never with safety be treated with too much respect.’

‘We’s all so modest in Primrose Court, that’s the wust on us,’ replied the woman.  ’But, Muster Cyril, sir, I don’t think you’ve noticed that the queen’s t’other eye’s got dry now.’

Cyril gravely poured her out a glass of foaming ale from a bottle that stood upon a little Indian bamboo-table, and handed it to her carefully over the silks, saying to me,

’Her majesty’s elegant way of hinting that she likes to wet both eyes!’

Such foolery as this and at such a time irritated me sorely; but there was no help for it now.  Whether I should or should not open to him the subject that had taken me thither, I must, I saw, let him have his humour till the woman was dismissed.

‘And now, goddess,’ said he, ’while I am doing justice to the design of your nose—­’

‘You can’t do that, sir,’ interjected the creature, ’it’s sich a beauty, ha! ha!  I allus say that when I do die, I shall die a-larfin’.  They calls me “Jokin’ Meg” in Primrose Court.  I shall die a-larfin’, they say in Primrose Court, and so I shall—­unless I die a-cryin’,’ she added in an utterly different and tragic voice which greatly struck me.

’While I am trying to do justice to that beautiful bridge you must tell my friend about yourself and your daughter, and how you and she first became two shining lights in the art world of London.’

‘You makes me blush,’ said the woman, ‘an’ blow me if blushin’ ain’t bin an’ made t’other eye dry.’

She then took another glass of ale, grinned, shook herself, as though preparing for an effort, and said,

’Well you must know, sir, as my name’s Meg Gudgeon, leaseways that was my name till my darter chrissened me Mrs. Knocker, and I lives in Primrose Court, Great Queen Street, and my reg’lar perfession is a-sellin’ coffee “so airly in the mornin’,” and I’ve got a darter as ain’t quite so ‘ansom as me, bein’ the moral of her father as is over the water a-livin’ in the fine ’Straley.  And you must know, sir, that one of summer’s day there comes a knock at our door as sends my ’eart into my mouth and makes me cry out, “The coppers, by jabbers!” and when I goes down and opens the door, lo! and behold, there stan’s a chap wi’ great goggle eyes, dressed all in shiny black, jest like a Quaker.’ (Here she made a noise between a laugh and a cough.) ’I allus say that when I do die I shall die a-larfin’—­unless I die a-cryin’,’ she added, in the same altered voice that had struck me before.

‘Well, mother,’ said Cyril, ‘and what did the shiny Quaker say?’