Nosey had been an errand-boy, a rather
superior kind of errandboy, who went his rounds on a ramshackle bicycle
with a carrier fixed in front. Painted in large letters on the carrier
was the legend:

J. HOLMES & SON,
FISHMONGER ICE, ETC.,

and below, in much smaller letters, "Cash on delivery."

Janie was a general servant in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. She it was
who answered the area door when Nosey called to deliver such kippers and
smoked haddock as were destined by the gods and Mr. Holmes for the
boarding-house breakfast table.

It is hard to say in what respect Janie lit the flame of love within
Nosey's breast. She was diminutive and flat-chested; her skin was sallow
from life-long confinement in basement sculleries and the atmosphere of
the Bloomsbury boarding-house. She had little beady black eyes, and a
print dress that didn't fit her at all well. One stocking was generally
coming down in folds over her ankle. Her hands were chapped and
nubbly--pathetic as the toil-worn hands of a woman alone can be.
Altogether she was just the little unlovely slavey of fiction and the
drama and everyday life in boarding-house-land.

Yet the fishmonger's errand-boy--Orson Baines, by your leave, and captain
of his soul--loved her as not even Antony loved Cleopatra.

Janie met him every other Sunday as near three o'clock as she could get
away. The Sunday boarding-house luncheon included soup on its menu,
which meant more plates to wash up than usual. They met under the third
lamp-post on the left-hand side going towards the British Museum.

Once a fortnight, from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m., Janie tasted the penultimate
triumph of womanhood. She was courted. Poor Janie!

No daughter of Eve had less of the coquette in her composition. Not for
a moment did she realise the furrows that she was ploughing in Nosey's
amiable soul. Other girls walked out on their Sundays. The possession
of a young man--even a fishmonger's errand-boy on twelve bob a week--was
a necessary adjunct to life itself. Of all that "walking out" implied:
of love, even as it was understood in Bloomsbury basements, Janie's
anaemic little heart suspected very little; but romance was there,
fluttering tattered ribbons, luring her on through the drab fog of her
workaday existence.

It was otherwise with Nosey. His love for Janie was a very real affair,
although what sowed the seeds was not apparent, and although the soil in
which they took ro