Once more he produced the inevitable coin, and again received a blessing, as trembling, unlovely fingers clutched it. He was about to turn away, when something almost attractive in the wrinkled face held his attention. The woman had looked searchingly at the girl, then into his eyes, and, touched by sudden sympathy, there was a faded echo of comeliness in her features that came and went, like a glow caused by a breath of air on ashes that seemed dead.
"What is it, mother?" he asked, holding the girl's arm. "Business bad?"
"Yes—yes," answered the woman in a low, weak voice; "but it's her I'm thinking of. Take care of her, laddie, won't you?"
The girl, unable to understand them, leaned over and smiled into the wrinkled face. With a little air of embarrassment Pippa picked half-a-dozen violets from her cluster, holding them out to the woman, who took them with strangely twitching features, just as an encircling current of the Strand caught them in its grip and carried them away.
Although they had rested at noon in a quiet hostelry in Oxford Street, after visiting Kensington Gardens where the delightful statue of Peter Pan pleads for belief in fairies, it was obvious that the strain of countless impressions was beginning to bring fatigue to his charge. Accordingly the airman paused in the doorway of a theater and drew her away from the traffic's turmoil.
"It is three-thirty," he said, "and there is a performance inside."
Her eyes, which still held their tenderness for the woman of the flowers, sparkled happily.
"That is delightful monsieur. Is it a play as I read in my books?"
"Alas, Pippa! there are no more plays—only revues."
"But there is music?"