Miss Montgomery pleaded.
"I'll think it over," was all that Mr. Jowett could be made to promise. "Look me up again."
"When?" asked Miss Montgomery.
"What's to-day?--Thursday. Say Monday." Mr. Jowett rang the bell.
"Take my advice," said the old gentleman, laying a fatherly hand on Johnny's shoulder, "leave business to us men. You are a handsome girl. You can do better for yourself than this."
A clerk entered, Johnny rose.
"On Monday next, then," Johnny reminded him.
"At four o'clock," agreed Mr. Jowett. "Good afternoon."
Johnny went out feeling disappointed, and yet, as he told himself, he hadn't done so badly. Anyhow, there was nothing for it but to wait till Monday. Now he would go home, change his clothes, and get some dinner. He hailed a hansom.
"Number twenty-eight--no. Stop at the Queen's Street corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields," Johnny directed the man.
"Quite right, miss," commented the cabman pleasantly. "Corner's best--saves all talk."
"What do you mean?" demanded Johnny.
"No offence, miss," answered the man. "We was all young once."
Johnny climbed in. At the corner of Queen Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields, Johnny got out. Johnny, who had been pondering other matters, put his hand instinctively to where, speaking generally, his pocket should have been; then recollected himself.
"Let me see, did I think to bring any money out with me, or did I not?" mused Johnny, as he stood upon the kerb.
"Look in the ridicule, miss," suggested the cabman.
Johnny looked. It was empty.
"Perhaps I put it in my pocket," thought Johnny.
The cabman hitched his reins to the whip-socket and leant back.
"It's somewhere about here, I know, I saw it," Johnny told himself.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Johnny added aloud to the cabman.
"Don't you worry about that, miss," replied the cabman civilly; "we are used to it. A shilling a quarter of an hour is what we charge."
"Of all the damned silly tricks!" muttered Johnny to himself.
Two small boys and a girl carrying a baby paused, interested.
"Go away," told them the cabman. "You'll have troubles of your own one day."
The urchins moved a few steps further, then halted again and were joined by a slatternly woman and another boy.
"Got it!" cried Johnny, unable to suppress his delight as his hand slipped through a fold. The lady with the baby, without precisely knowing why, set up a shrill cheer. Johnny's delight died away; it wasn't the pocket-hole. Short of taking the skirt off and turning it inside out, it didn't seem to Johnny that he ever would find that pocket.
Then in that moment of despair he came across it accidentally. It was as empty as the reticule!
"I am sorry," said Johnny to the cabman, "but I appear to have come out without my purse."
The cabman said he had heard that tale before, and was ****** preparations to descend. The crowd, now numbering eleven, looked hopeful. It occurred to Johnny later that he might have offered his umbrella to the cabman; at least it would have fetched the eighteenpence. One thinks of these things afterwards. The only idea that occurred to him at the moment was that of getting home.
"'Ere, 'old my 'orse a minute, one of yer," shouted the cabman.
Half a dozen willing hands seized the dozing steed and roused it into madness.
"Hi! stop 'er!" roared the cabman.
"She's down!" shouted the excited crowd.
"Tripped over 'er skirt," explained the slatternly woman. "They do 'amper you."
" No, she's not. She's up again!" vociferated a delighted plumber, with a sounding slap on his own leg. "Gor blimy, if she ain't a good 'un!"
Fortunately the Square was tolerably clear and Johnny a good runner. Holding now his skirt and petticoat high in his left hand, Johnny moved across the Square at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. A butcher's boy sprang in front of him with arms held out to stop him. The thing that for the next three months annoyed that butcher boy most was hearing shouted out after him "Yah! who was knocked down and run over by a lidy?" By the time Johnny reached the Strand, via Clement's Inn, the hue and cry was far behind.
Johnny dropped his skirts and assumed a more girlish pace. Through Bow Street and Long Acre he reached Great Queen Street in safety.
Upon his own doorstep he began to laugh. His afternoon's experience had been amusing; still, on the whole, he wasn't sorry it was over. One can have too much even of the best of jokes.
Johnny rang the bell.
The door opened. Johnny would have walked in had not a big, raw-boned woman barred his progress.
"What do you want?" demanded the raw-boned woman.
"Want to come in," explained Johnny.
"What do you want to come in for?"
This appeared to Johnny a foolish question. On reflection he saw the sense of it. This raw-boned woman was not Mrs. Pegg, his landlady. Some friend of hers, he supposed.
"It's all right," said Johnny, "I live here. Left my latchkey at home, that's all."
"There's no females lodging here," declared the raw-boned lady.
"And what's more, there's going to be none."
All this was very vexing. Johnny, in his joy at reaching his own doorstep, had not foreseen these complications. Now it would be necessary to explain things. He only hoped the story would not get round to the fellows at the club.
"Ask Mrs. Pegg to step up for a minute," requested Johnny.
"Not at 'ome," explained the raw-boned lady.
"Not--not at home?"
"Gone to Romford, if you wish to know, to see her mother."
"Gone to Romford?"
"I said Romford, didn't I?" retorted the raw-boned lady, tartly.
"What--what time do you expect her in?"
"Sunday evening, six o'clock," replied the raw-boned lady.
Johnny looked at the raw-boned lady, imagined himself telling the raw-boned lady the ******, unvarnished truth, and the raw-boned lady's utter disbelief of every word of it. An inspiration came to his aid.
"I am Mr. Bulstrode's sister," said Johnny meekly; "he's expecting me."
"Thought you said you lived here?" reminded him the raw-boned lady.
"I meant that he lived here," replied poor Johnny still more meekly. "He has the second floor, you know."