“That’s for to-night—­the unveiling of Constant’s portrait.  Gladstone speaks.  Awful demand for places.”

“Gladstone!” sneered Denzil.  “Who wants to hear Gladstone?  A man who’s devoted his life to pulling down the pillars of Church and State.”

“A man who’s devoted his whole life to propping up the crumbling Fads of Religion and Monarchy.  But, for all that, the man has his gifts, and I’m burnin’ to hear him.”

“I wouldn’t go out of my way an inch to hear him,” said Denzil; and went up to his room, and when Mrs. Crowl sent him up a cup of nice strong tea at tea-time, the brat who bore it found him lying dressed on the bed, snoring unbeautifully.

The evening wore on.  It was fine frosty weather.  The Whitechapel Road swarmed with noisy life, as though it were a Saturday night.  The stars flared in the sky like the lights of celestial costermongers.  Everybody was on the alert for the advent of Mr. Gladstone.  He must surely come through the Road on his journey from the West Bow-wards.  But nobody saw him or his carriage, except those about the Hall.  Probably he went by tram most of the way.  He would have caught cold in an open carriage, or bobbing his head out of the window of a closed.

“If he had only been a German prince, or a cannibal king,” said Crowl, bitterly, as he plodded towards the Club, “we should have disguised Mile End in bunting and blue fire.  But perhaps it’s a compliment.  He knows his London, and it’s no use trying to hide the facts from him.  They must have queer notions of cities, those monarchs.  They must fancy everybody lives in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like as if I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes.”  By a defiance of chronology Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the simile.

“And why shouldn’t life be fuller of the Beautiful?” said Denzil.  The poet had brushed the reluctant mud off his garments to the extent it was willing to go, and had washed his face, but his eyes were still bloodshot from the cultivation of the Beautiful.  Denzil was accompanying Crowl to the door of the Club out of good fellowship.  Denzil was himself accompanied by Grodman, though less obtrusively.  Least obtrusively was he accompanied by his usual Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp’s agents.  There was a surging nondescript crowd about the Club, so that the police, and the doorkeeper, and the stewards could with difficulty keep out the tide of the ticketless, through which the current of the privileged had equal difficulty in permeating.  The streets all around were thronged with people longing for a glimpse of Gladstone.  Mortlake drove up in a hansom (his head a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, swaying and bowing to right and left) and received all the pent-up enthusiasm.

“Well, good-by, Cantercot,” said Crowl.

“No, I’ll see you to the door, Peter.”

They fought their way shoulder to shoulder.