A curious voice, leagues away, said: "Yer've got ter pye fer it, y'know."
She put her fingers in her purse and held out what she could gather. A figure that had been going up and down in front of her seemed to take a tremendous sidelong sweep and vanished. She was left with a paper in her hands and knew what she must do. But if this din, this giddy circling....
It suddenly stopped. Everything stopped. There was not a sound, there was not a movement.
II
London stands stock still in the middle of a windy, crowded pavement to open its evening paper and to peer at the stop-press space for only one particular purpose. While she thus stood and peered (and suddenly knew this icy silence was the gathering of an immense tide that was coming—coming) a woman who wore an apron over a capitally developed figure, and a rakish cloth cap over a headful of curl papers, opened the door of the house immediately beside her (appearing with the air of one shot at immense velocity out of a trap) and called "I! Piper!" She then exclaimed nearly as loudly "Ennoyin'!" and then saw Audrey.
This lady's name was Mrs. Erps, and she knew perfectly well, and rejoiced to observe an example of, the peculiarity in regard to London's evening paper that has been noted above. Mrs. Erps rolled her solid hands in her apron and came down ingratiatingly. A model of correctness. "Excoose me, my dear," she began, "Excoose me, wot 'orse won the tooo-firty? My old man—Ho, thenks, I'm sure—Ho, gryshus!"
Relating the incident later in the evening to a lady friend, and acting it with considerable dramatic power: "'Ands me the piper she does," said Mrs. Erps, "as natural as I 'ands this apring to you and then looks at me jus' as if I mightn't had been there, and then she says in a whissiper 'Oh, dear!' she says. 'O Gawd!' and dahn she goes plump—dahn like that!" explained Mrs. Erps from the floor, very nearly carrying her friend with her in the stress of dramatic illustration.
But Mrs. Erps was more than a great tragedy actress; she was also a kindly soul and there is to be added to this quality the genial warmth aroused in her by the fact that the tooo-firty winner was Lollipop, that Lollipop had cantered home at what she called sevings, and that her old man was seving times arf a dollar the richer for the performance. "Carry 'er in there," said Mrs. Erps in a very loud voice to a policeman in particular and to a considerable area of the street in general. "Young man, that's my 'ouse, and Mrs. Elbert Erps my nime, and dahn in front of it the pore young thing's fell jus' as she was 'anding me this very piper wot 'ad come aht to see the tooo-firty winner. 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me—'"
The policeman: "All right, mother. Now, then, you boys."
Mrs. Elbert Erps, going backwards up the steps, hands beneath the arms of that poor stricken creature: "There's a cleeng, sweet bed in my first front, well-haired and wool blenkits, that lets eight and six and find yer own, and could ask ten, and there she'll rest, the poor pretty thing, dropped on me very doorstep, as yer might say, and standin' there with the piper same as you might. 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me—'"