At the corner of Air Street they got out and began to walk down Piccadilly towards the Berkeley square.  It was now evening.  The lamps were lighted and the murmur of strolling crowds filled the gloomy air.  Madame stared feverishly about her, excited by the press, the flashing hansoms and the gaily-illuminated shops.  Once, as she passed Benoist’s, she murmured “O festum dies!” and again, by the Berkeley, when she was momentarily jostled by a very large and umbrageous tramp who had apparently been celebrating the joys of beggary—­“Acto profanus vulgam!” But generally she was silent, enwrapped, no doubt, in bookish thought.  When, at length, they stood before the door of number one thousand she breathed a heavy sigh.

“Please,” said the Prophet, in a trembling voice, “please enter quietly.  My grandmother is very unwell.”

“Ankles seems to be a very painful complaint, sir,” said Mr. Sagittarius.  “But Madame and self are not in the habit of creating uproar by our movements.”

“No, no.  Of course not.  Still—­on tiptoe if you don’t mind.”

“I cannot walk on tiptoe,” said Madame, in a voice that sounded to the Prophet terrifically powerful.  “The attitude is precarious and undignified.  As the great Juvenile—­”

“Yes, yes.  Ah! that’s it!”

He managed to get his key into the door and very gingerly opened it.  Madame and Mr. Sagittarius stepped into the hall, followed closely by the Prophet, who was content on conveying them unobserved to the library.

“This way,” he whispered.  “This way.  Softly!  Softly!”

He began to steal, like a shadow, across the hall, and, impressed by his surreptitious manner, his old and valued friends instinctively followed his example.  All three of them, then, with long steps and theatrical pauses, were stagily upon the move, when suddenly the door that led to the servants’ quarters swung open and Mrs. Fancy Quinglet debouched into their midst, succeeded by Mr. Ferdinand, who carried in his hand a menu card in a silver holder.  At the moment of their appearance the Prophet, holding his finger to his lips, was taking a soft and secret stride in the direction of the library door, his body bent forward and his head protruded towards the sanctum he longed to gain, and Madame and Mr. Sagittarius, true to the instinct of imitation that dwells in our monkey race, were in precisely similar attitudes behind him.  The hall being rather dark, and the gait of the trio it contained thus tragically surreptitious, it was perhaps not unnatural that Mrs. Fancy should give vent to a piercing cry of terror, and that Mr. Ferdinand should drop the menu and crouch back against the wall in a hunched position expressive of alarm.  At any rate, such were their actions, while—­for their part—­the Prophet and his two old and valued friends uttered a united exclamation and struck three attitudes that were pregnant with defensive amazement.