"Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?"
"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident. Got a nasty arm."
"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying me back to Pilgrim Street in my car?"
After that Mary Ellen's mind became an incoherent blur. A stately limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and Excalibur was stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was much too dazed to converse with him.
The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim Street was the greatest moment of Mary Ellen's life.
Meantime upstairs in the first-floor front the curate, lying in his uncomfortable flock bed, was saying:—
"If you really mean it, sir—"
"I do mean it. If those two children had been burned to death unnoticed I should never have forgiven myself, and the public would never have forgiven the company."
"Well, sir, since you say that, you—well, you could do me a service. Could you possibly use your influence to get me a billet—I'm not asking for an incumbency; any old curacy would do—a billet I could marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I—we have been waiting a long time now."
There was a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:—