The stranger laughed also. “Lose it! You have no idea how honest people are. I hadn’t myself. The whole world has gone up in my estimation within the last few weeks. People run after me for quite long distances and force it into my hand—people on rainy days who haven’t got umbrellas of their own. It is the same with this hat.” The stranger sighed as he took it up. “I am always trying to get off with something reasonably shabby in exchange for it. I am always found out and stopped.”
“Why don’t you pawn them?” suggested the practicable Tommy.
The stranger regarded her with admiration.
“Do you know, I never thought of that,” said the stranger. “Of course. What a good idea! Thank you so much.”
The stranger departed, evidently much relieved.
“Silly fellow,” mused Tommy. “They won’t give him a quarter of the value, and he will say: ‘Thank you so much,’ and be quite contented.” It worried Tommy a good deal that day, the thought of that stranger’s helplessness.
The stranger’s name was Richard Danvers. He lived the other side of Holborn, in Featherstone Buildings, but much of his time came to be spent in the offices of Good Humour.
Peter liked him. “Full of promise,” was Peter’s opinion. “His criticism of that article of mine on ‘The Education of Woman’ showed both sense and feeling. A scholar and a thinker.”
Flipp, the office-boy (spelt Philip), liked him; and Flipp’s attitude, in general, was censorial. “He’s all right,” pronounced Flipp; “nothing stuck-up about him. He’s got plenty of sense, lying hidden away.”
Miss Ramsbotham liked him. “The men—the men we think about at all,” explained Miss Ramsbotham—“may be divided into two classes: the men we ought to like, but don’t; and the men there is no particular reason for our liking, but that we do. Personally I could get very fond of your friend Dick. There is nothing whatever attractive about him except himself.”