THE SEARCH ENDED.
TWO days of incessant inquiry passed by, leading to no result. Hour after hour Leveson wandered from street to street, from house to house, from shop to shop, asking the same questions over and over again, but always with the same result. Nobody could tell him anything of Job Kips, Klips, or Kippers,—and as for motherless and fatherless children, he might find them by the score. But he came upon no little Vi.
Not till the third afternoon did he meet with a clue. Asking an old vegetable vendor, at the corner of a dirty back street, the oft reiterated question, and at the same time making a slight purchase to secure a civil answer, she looked him in the face with a shrill laugh.
"Job Kips,—an' what if I does know a old man, as is named Job Kippis? Mayhap 'tisn't the same."
"Probably it is," said Leveson. "At all events I should be glad to know where Job Kippis lives."
"Ain't a 'tective, eh?" said the old woman. "He's a honest man, he be."
"I am no detective. I am a clergyman," responded Leveson. "You need have no fear that the old man will gain harm from my visit."
"Nay, if yer be a parson, he'd likely be glad to see yer, for they says he be ill."
"Tell me where he lives, and I will give you a shilling," said Leveson. "Or show me the house, and you shall have half-a-crown."
The old creature's eyes twinkled. She left her barrow of vegetables in charge of a girl, and led him off at a brisk pace round the corner,—into a gloomy street, with overhanging houses, blackened and grimy to a degree which even he, in all his city work, had rarely seen surpassed.