"I am as careful as I can be, Mrs. Oxenham."
"Take my advice, and don't grudge sixpence for a blow on the pier; it will be the most paying investment of all, you'll find. Where's your brother? What does he do for you?"
Jenny blushed slightly. "There's nothing he wouldn't do for us if we would let him," she said. "But we won't allow him to cripple himself."
"Does he live with you?"
"Not now. He has taken lodgings for himself."
"He doesn't approve of the tea-room, does he?"
Jenny blushed a deeper hue. "He is only a boy," she murmured indulgently. "He doesn't understand. He will some day."
She saw some of her customers make a movement to rise, and Mrs. Oxenham smiled farewell and departed, glad to be blocked on the dark staircase by new people coming up.
"Brave little creature!" was her inward ejaculation, as she stepped into her carriage, which seemed to block the narrow street. "I see what she has had to fight against. Ah, well, women are not all talking dolls, as Tony calls them. I wonder what Tony will say to her?" She paused to consider, and thought it would be as well not to take Tony there. "I hate to see all those men lounging about on her little chairs," she said to herself. "They are not meant for men. I do hope and trust they won't any of them take it into their empty heads to make love to her. She is not exactly pretty, but she is very attractive—dreadfully attractive, for such a place. She doesn't know it in the least, but she has a face that one can hardly take one's eyes off."
The carriage clattered up to the door of the palatial business premises of Churchill & Son, and the chief stepped out with the alertness of a young man.