cab. The
Bacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and
gesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but
he did not wait for it. "He has gone _mad_!" said Minnie; "it's that
horrid science of his"; and, opening the window, would have called
after him. The slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck
with the same idea of mental disorder. He pointed hastily to the
Bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the apron of the cab
slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a moment
cab, and Bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of
the roadway and disappeared round the corner.

Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she
drew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. "Of
course he is eccentric," she meditated. "But running about London--in
the height of the season, too--in his socks!" A happy thought struck
her. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the
hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon
the doorstep, and hailed a cab that opportunely crawled by. "Drive
me up the road and round Havelock Crescent, and see if we can find a
gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat."

"Velveteen coat, ma'am, and no 'at. Very good, ma'am." And the cabman
whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to
this address every day in his life.

Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that
collects round the cabmen's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled
by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse,
driven furiously.

They were silent as it went by, and then as it receded--"That's 'Arry
'Icks. Wot's _he_ got?" said the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles.

"He's a-using his whip, he is, _to_ rights," said the ostler boy.

"Hullo!" said poor old Tommy Byles; "here's another bloomin' loonatic.
Blowed if there aint."

"It's old George," said old Tootles, "and he's drivin' a loonatic,
_as_ you say. Aint he a-clawin' out of the keb? Wonder if he's after
'Arry 'Icks?"

The group round the cabmen's shelter became animated. Chorus: "Go it,
George!" "It's a race." "You'll ketch 'em!" "Whip up!"

"She's a goer, she is!" said the ostler boy.

"Strike me giddy!" cried old Tootles. "Here! _I'm_ a-goin' to begin
in a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the kebs in Hampstead aint
gone mad this mor