ng back any more for a month."

The bell tinkled again.

"I thought perhaps you had forgotten the hot water," the lady said
sweetly.

"No, madam," replied Miss Dawson as she placed the jug on the tray;
"Miss Browne, our other young lady, being gone home, we're a little
short-handed, like. The young person who is taking her place is rather
awkward at the work, and puts us backward," she raised her voice here
that Lucilla might enjoy the joke.

"Ah. I thought things were not quite so nice," the customer said.

"No, madam," acquiesced Miss Dawson, and giggled, and pinched Lucilla
as she retired behind the screen.

The lady at the tea-table was a vivacious creature; she rattled on with
hardly a break in her stream of chatter through the half-hour, during
which she ate all the bread and butter and drank nearly all the tea.
Lucilla, behind her screen, listening for the pleasant tones of the
man's halting speech, grew weary of the high-pitched, untiring voice.

"It is getting late," Captain Finch said at last. "I had better put you
in a cab."

"You aren't going to take me back?"

"Sorry. I've got to buy some things."

When they had left the room and were going downstairs, the woman's
tongue still volubly running, Lucilla came with a soft rush from behind
the screen and looked from the window. The shops round the market place
were brilliantly lighted now; the elegant backs of the couple emerging
from the confectioner's beneath the tea-room were easily visible. The
man raised his stick and hailed a hansom.

"How wonderfully things happen!" mused Lucilla. "He said, I remember,
that he was going to the wedding of a friend; to think that it should
have been here!"

"If you and him are friends, I can't think why you didn't show
yourself," Miss Dawson called from behind her screen.

"I daresay you can't," said Lucilla to herself.

"Where'd you see him first?" Miss Dawson asked. "Did he come up and
speak to you?"

The withering glance which Lucilla cast in the direction of the screen.
"Come up and speak to me!" she repeated.

"And why not, pray? Rubbish!" laughed Miss Dawson, rattling the teacups
she was washing. "What does it matter in the end? Comes to the same
thing when you do know them."

"You and I look at such things from a different point of view."

"Heap of nonsense!" Miss Dawson shrilled. "Your father was a lawyer
that failed and couldn't pay his debts; mine was a bankrupt
greengrocer. Both of 'em's d