"Oo-er, it will be all right if we can find it there, wown't it, now? I 'ave missed that card, I can't tell you! 'Cos my mother give me that card, an' I love everythink what my mother gives me. You dunnow what a good mother I got, Mr. Baffin. She's working 'ard all day to bring me up proper, she is, an' the place on 'er arm is ever so bad still. If on'y I could learn to sit still, I could earn a lot of menny to give to my mother, couldn't I, Mr. Baffin? 'Cos you said so, didn't you, Mr. Baffin?
"See if I don't learn to sit still; people that try can always succeed, can't they? My mother often tells me that. Be a dear, an' move the box, Mr. Baffin."
We moved the box, but the card was not there; and Prudence succumbed to a fresh outbreak of tears, and had to be comforted with condensed milk, which she relished in spoonfuls direct from the tin. We rescued this stimulant from Prudence in time to avert the tragedy of an overdose; and then she departed. "I got a friend waitin' for me," she said, "an' my mother said I was to be 'ome early. An' this is my mother's ironin' night.... 'Ere, Mr. Baffin—was you laughin' at me when I come over funny on the box there? 'Cos I won't sit for anybody what laughs at me. I'll go out charrin', an' spoil me 'ands, that's what I'll do. Don't you think I could learn to do charrin' if I wanted to? I can learn a lot if I try."
"Don't spoil your hands," said Baffin; "they are beautiful hands."
Baffin did not flatter her. Prudence's hands were as the hands of a lute-player—slender and white and sensitive, flowing from wrists which carried themselves subtly, like a fair swan's neck. Such hands, I believe, may be produced by the simple process of being folded gracefully for ten generations. We often wondered, Baffin and I, whence Prudence derived those hands. That much-talked-of lady, Prudence's mother, had never been presented to us; but—frail hands and a frail spirit! Which of these was the mother's gift?
"Hee! hee!" giggled Prudence, as she spread the little hands before her, "yew ain't 'arf a tease, are yew, Mr. Baffin? ... Funny 'ands fur charrin', ain't they, though? ... May I flap your letter-box as I go out? It don't 'arf rattle. Oo, I em a silly girl, I em! 'Ere, I say—when I come to sit agen, shall I bring my mouth-organ, and show you 'ow I'm learnin' meself to play 'The Bluebells of Scotland'? An' you'll look for my picture card, wown't you, 'cos my mother give it to me? And please let me sit agen soon. Oy revoy."
When it became quite clear, from the silence of the letter-box flap, that Prudence had wholly departed, Baffin sat himself wearily down and groaned.
"What the deuce ought one to do?" he demanded, with great earnestness.
"This being your affair," I answered, "you will have to think out that little problem for yourself. The circumstance of your living in a Christian country will not ... prove helpful."
"Don't tell Brink," said Baffin. "He'll want to poison her."