ted with, that lies in the angle of Park Lane and Piccadilly.
Persons of exaggerated sense of locality or mature hereditary
experience can make short cuts through this district, but the wayfarer
(broadly speaking) had better not try, lest he be found dead in a mews
by the Coroner, and made the subject of a verdict according to the
evidence. Sally knew all about it of old, and went as straight through
the fog as the ground-plan of the streets permitted to the house where
her mother and a nurse were doing what might be done to prolong the
tenancy of the top-floor. But both knew the occupant had received
notice to quit. Only, it did seem so purposeless, this writ of
ejectment and violent expulsion, when he was quite ready to go, and
wanted nothing but permission.

CHAPTER XXIII

OF A FOG THAT WAS UP-TO-DATE, AND HOW A FIRE-ENGINE RELIEVED SALLY FROM
A BOY. HOW SALLY GOT IN AT A GENTLEMEN'S CLUB, AND HOW VETERANS COULD
RECOLLECT HER FATHER. BUT THEY KNOW WHAT SHE CAN BE TOLD, AND WHAT
SHE CAN'T. HOW MAJOR ROPER WOULD GO OUT IN THE FOG

Mrs. Fenwick was not sorry to break down a little, now that her
daughter had come to break down on. She soon pulled together, however.
Breaking down was not a favourite relaxation of hers, as we have seen.
Her husband had, of course, left her to go to his place of business,
not materially the worse for a night spent without closed eyes and in
the anxiety of a sick-chamber.

"Oh, mother darling! you are quite worn out. How is he?"

"He's quiet now, kitten; but we thought the cough would have killed him
in the night. He's only so quiet now because of the opiates. Only at
his age----" Mrs. Fenwick stopped and looked at the nurse, whose shake
of the head was an assent to the impossibility of keeping a patient of
eighty alive on opiates. Then, having gone thus far in indicating the
grim probabilities of the case, Sally's mother added, as alleviation
to a first collision with Death: "But Dr. Mildmay says the inflammation
and fever may subside, and then, if he can take nourishment----" but
got no further, for incredulity of this sort of thing is in the air of
the establishment.

Not, perhaps, on Sally's part. Young people who have not seen Death
face-to-face have little real conception of his horrible unasked
intrusion into the house of Life. That house is to them almost as
inviolable as the home of our babyhood was to the most of us, a
sacred fane under the protection of an omn