and going to the window herself. "There!
Mr. Ridley, come here."

A man in a slate-coloured tunic, turned up in
the worst taste with orange, and carrying a
rifle, looked back. He was the plainest creature
I ever saw, and was quite smooth shaved. He
came running up.

"Ah," he said, "is that you? What a
surprise!"

"Isn't it?" she said. "And who'd ever
have thought of meeting you here? Get in, will
you? Of course you will."

"I have got this musket and bag, government
stores, so must be careful, you know; but
if you will have us all——''

"I am afraid," I said, "we could scarcely
accommodate both you and your weapon.
There is a large party coming back, a family—
and if they find their seats gone——"

"Nonsense," he said; "why didn't they
keep them? At all events, you can tell them
you did your best to keep them, and that I took
them." And on that he came pushing in, with
his heavy gun and bag, which kept dropping on
the ground, to the great risk of our feet.

"There," said he, at last, sitting down
between me and her, and fanning his hot tan
face with his handkerchief. "There we are.
This is all uncommon nice, I can tell you. Did
I ever think, when I turned out of my bed
this morning—which, by the way, was at five
o'clock—that all this was in store for me?
I did not, indeed." And he burst into
that most objectionable of all laughs, known
as the "guffaw," or horse-laugh. He was
carrying his great musket between his knees,
and I saw that his fingers were still black with
powder. " We had a field-day to-day," he
went on, "and a rifle-match against the local
Whitechapel fellows. Licked them soundly.
"What could you expect from Whitechapels? I
am so tired and hungry. You haven't the little
sandwich-box, eh—the old sandwich-box? No.
I thought not."

"No," she said; "but I am so glad we met
—we shall have such fun. And O, Ridley"—
this was nice familiarity, addressing a gentleman
by his surname!—"O, Ridley, I am going
to stay in London for a week, at the great new
hotel, you know—what do you call it?"

It will have been observed that all this time
I was in a manner passed over; that I had
sunk into an inglorious obscurity, being
precipitated from my former prosperity. Feeling
this wanton degradation very acutely, I saw an
opportunity here, and struck in:

"You mean the new Metropolitan Hotel
Palace Company, Limited, I think?"

"Yes," she said; "it is all the same, I
believe.''

For the first time he looked at me straight,
beginning with my sleeves, and so on upwards.
Presently he whispered to her with a curious
smile, and she whispered to him, and smiled too.
During the whole of the rest of the journey
to London they talked, and chattered, and
whispered in this confidential way. Near the
end I think she got ashamed of the ungrateful
way in which she was behaving to me. After all,
I had laid her under some obligation as regards
the dressing-case and that descent of the ladder.
But it was no matter. When the coarse Ridley
got out at stations—which he did at nearly every
one to fill what he called his "pocket-pistol"—
we got on again into the old friendly footing.
I began to think she was a little intimidated by
his presence.

We arrived in London. "We can wait
here," he said to her, "and Tommy shall get
us a cab." I had got my own luggage very
quickly, and it lay on the ground beside me.
I had also secured the dressing-case, to which
I had certainly a little claim from past services.
Suddenly the hateful Ridley looked down.
"You needn't," he said. "Here. Give it me.
Thank you!"

I resisted this attempt. "I beg your pardon,"
I said. "I have a sort of claim—have I
not?" I said to her, with a half smile.

"Good gracious!" she said, "how? Uncle
bought it for me when I went to school."

"O, I don't mean that," I said. "I mean
coming down the ladder—you recollect."

"What the devil do you mean?" he said,
roughly. "Give the lady her case, confound it;"
and with a sudden jerk he snatched it from me.

She saw the reproachful look in my face.
"I am so much obliged to you," she said;
"I mistook—you know."

Here was the cab. They got in. I stood
by, waiting, looking with a strange expression
at the seat. "We are all going to the same
hotel," I said, " the Metropolitan Palace,
Limited—not as regards room certainly, according
to all account," I added, repeating my little
joke to mollify him.

"Exactly," he said; "I think we have
everything in now. Would you tell the fellow
Metropolitan Hotel?"

"I see there is one vacant place," I said,
reproachfully to her.

"Go on," he called; and they did go on.
We went to the same hotel. I was ravished,
as the French say, with the magnificence of
its proportions and decorations. But that was
only the first feeling. Another, and another of
another sort altogether, succeeded almost
immediately. That feeling was her—or she (which
should it be?). The fatal dressing-case, and
the more fatal descent down the ladder into the
boat, had done its work and had made me more
or less indifferent to Owen Jones and his
Arabian work, to the four hundred beds that
had been "put up," and even to that "hoist"
or "lift" which moved by hydraulic power.

Ah! The lift. I am coming to that now.
I used to meet her constantly. In the morning.
In the evening. In the hall, in the great dining-
room (where I never could get placed near her).
She was always kind and good to me; but she
was always with that Ridley. I am inclined to
believe now that the odious volunteer exercised
a terrorism over her, the effect of which she had
too much self-respect, to let me see. He was living
there; so was Tommy. She was living there; so
was I. I may as well confess it now, I used to lie