his tiger's
skin, which he might easily have done in open day, in spite of the
twenty years between, for the old chap was as sharp as a razor about
people. He passed Fenwick with a good-evening, and Mr. Fenwick, he
presumed, and his good lady was on ahead, as indicated by the speaker's
thumb across his shoulder. Fenwick made all acknowledgments, and felt
his way upstairs in the dark till the nurse with a hand-lamp looked
over the banisters for him.

* * * * *

When Sally came back to Krakatoa Villa early next day she found an
empty house, and a note signed Jeremiah that explained its emptiness.
We had been sent for to the Major, and Sally wasn't to be frightened.
He had had a better night than last night, the doctor and nurse said;
and Sally might come on as soon as she had had a good lunch. Only she
was on no account to fidget.

So she didn't fidget. She had the good lunch very early, left Ann to
put back her things in the drawers, and found her way through the
thickening fog to the Tube, only just anxious enough about the Major
to feel, until the next station was Marble Arch, that London had
changed and got cruder and more cold-hearted since she went away, and
that the guard was chilly and callous about her, and didn't care how
jolly a house-party she had left behind her at Riverfordhook. For it
was that nice aunt of Tishy's that had asked her down for a few days,
and the few days had caught on to their successors as they came, and
become a fortnight. But he appeared to show a human heart, at least,
by a certain cordiality with which he announced the prospect of Marble
Arch, which might have been because it was Sally's station. Now, he
had said Lancaster Gate snappishly, and Queen's Road with misgiving,
as though he would have fain added D.V. if the printed regulations
had permitted it. Also, Sally thought there was good feeling in the
reluctance he showed to let her out, based entirely on nervousness
lest she should slip (colloquially) between the platform.

You don't save anything by taking the pink 'bus, nor any 'bus for that
matter, down Park Lane when the traffic tumbles down every half-minute,
in spite of cinders lavished by the authority, and can't really see its
way to locomotion when it gets up. So you may just as well walk. Sally
did so, and in ten minutes reached the queer little purlieu teeming
with the well-connected, and named after the great Mysteries they are
connec