“I may not know the very hidentical trick madam’d be in want of—’er bein’ a lydy, as you might sye—but I could put ’er in the wye of findin’ out.”
“You don’t think I could find out for myself?”
“You see, it’s like this. I used to know a young man what everythink went ag’in’ ’im. And one dye ’e started out for to be a forgerer like—so as ’e’d be put in jyle—and be took care of—board and lodgin’ free—and all that. Well, out ’e starts, and not knowin’ the little ins and outs, as you might sye, everythink went agin ’im, just as it done before. And, would madam believe it? that young man ’e hended by studying for the ministry. Madam wouldn’t want to myke a mistyke like that, now would she?”
Letty turned this over in her mind. A career parallel to that of this young man would effect none of the results she was aiming at.
“Then what would you suggest?” she asked, at last.
“I could give madam the address of a lydy—an awful wicked lydy, she is—what’d put madam up to all the ropes. If madam was to go out into the cold world, like, this lydy’d give ’er a home. Besides the 256 address I’d give madam a sign like—so as the lydy’d know it was somethink special.”
“A sign? I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’d be this, madam.” He drew from his pocket a small silver thimble. “This’d be a password to the lydy. The minute she’d see it she’d know that the time ’ad come.”
“What time?”
“That’s somethink madam’d find out. I couldn’t explyne it before’and.”