"Hollo, you sir!" he addressed him roughly. "What are you doing here?"
Mr. James Swain eyed his questioner with no pleasant or grateful expression of countenance, and replied, curtly:
"Nothin'!"
"What brings you here, then?" continued Routh.
"I ain't a doin' you any harm, am I?" answered the boy, all his native impudence brought out in a moment by the overbearing manner of Routh. "It ain't your street, I believe, nor yet your archway, as I knows on; and if I chooses to odd job on this here lay, I don't hurt you, do I?"
The saucy manner of the lad did not anger Routh; he hardly seemed to notice it, but appeared to be entirely possessed by some struggling remembrance not of a pleasing kind, if his expression afforded any correct clue to it.
"Have you seen a lady come out of No. 60 since you have been about here?" he asked, passing by the boy's saucy remarks as if he had not heard them.
"Yes, I have. I saw the lady as lives there, not two minutes after you came in. She went that way." And he pointed down the street.
"Had she anything in her hand? Did she look as if she was going for a walk, or out shopping?"
"She hadn't no basket or bag, and she warn't partickler dressed; not as nice as she's dressed sometimes. I should say," continued Mr. Jim Swain, with an air of wisdom and decision, "as she was going for a constitootional, all by herself, and not to shop nor nothin'."