“Can’t get it under two and eleven,” her companion rejoined; “and those things are only a shilling three.  Look at that pink one there; it looks quite as good as feathers any day.  I’m not so gone on sable myself; you can’t have it pink, and pink’s my colour.”

They moved on to another window; they, no more than the passers by, noticed the old man who stood just at their elbow.  When they had gone he looked drearily in where they had looked.  There were the woolly things they had spoken of, short woven strips of loopy wool, to be tied about the neck by the two-inch ribbons that dangled from the ends.  “Ostrich wool boas in all colours, price, one shilling and three farthings,” they were ticketed.  He read the ticket mechanically.  He still held his two coins; he held them mechanically; had he thought about it he would scarcely have troubled to do so, they were so cruelly, so mockingly inadequate.  He read the ticket again; it obtruded itself upon him as trivial things do at unexpected times.  But now its meaning began to be impressed upon his brain—­“one shilling and three farthings”—­that, then, was the interpretation of the servant girl’s “shilling three.”  He had a shilling and a penny—­a shilling and three farthings.  He could buy one of those ostrich wool boas—­he would buy it—­that pink one for Julia.

The Halgrave carrier made it a rule to receive his passengers’ fares at the beginning of the expedition; if they were coming back as well as going with him they paid for the double journey at the outset in the morning.  Captain Polkington had so paid, and it was that fact, coupled with the early arrival at the stables of his one purchase, which induced the carrier to wait nearly half-an-hour for him.  The cart was packed, everything was ready, and the good man and the only other passenger he was taking back were growing impatient, when the Captain, carrying a small crushed paper parcel, appeared.  He had lost his way to the stables and had wandered hopelessly in his efforts to find it.  The carrier was rather short-tempered about it, and the other passenger said something to the effect that “They didn’t oughter let him out alone!” The Captain payed no attention but climbed into the back of the cart and sat down near his whisky.  The other passenger got up beside the driver, and in a few minutes they were lumbering down the crooked streets.  Soon they were out of the town and jogging quietly along the quiet lanes; the driver leaned forward to get a light from his passenger’s pipe; his face for a moment showed ruddy in the glow of the one lamp, then it sunk into gloom again.  Captain Polkington did not notice; he did not notice the voices in intermittent talk, or the fume of their tobacco that hung on the moist air and mingled with the scent of the drooping violets in his coat.  He knew nothing and was aware of nothing except that he was the most miserable, the most unfortunate of men.  Throughout the whole interminable journey he dwelt on that one thing as he sat by his whisky in the dark, clutching tightly the soft paper parcel and finding his only fragment of comfort in it.  He had after all bought something; poor, disappointed, fleeced as he was, he had spent his last money in buying a present for his daughter.