The brain specialist went back thoughtfully to his room, and when he had closed the door stood for a long time looking out at the little garden with its one big tree.
"I wonder, I wonder," he mused. "I'd give a good deal to get at that ayah—well! why not?—I could start for——" He looked round suddenly, then laughed as he passed his hand over his eyes. "Funny! I thought someone opened the door."
He moved to his desk and turned over his diary, showing blank page after blank page.
"Strange," he muttered. "There is nothing written down after to-day, not a single engagement. I must have entered them in some other book; very careless of me."
CHAPTER VI
"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate homes."—The Bible.
"Gawd!"
Mrs. Henry Higgins called upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her skirt, and fortunately kept her head.
"'Enery James—no! Gertrude Ellen—you've gotter better headpiece, jest yer slip along to the keeper an' tell 'im to look slippy and come along quick h'and quiet!"
Gertrude Ellen, puffed up with pride at the pull she had had over her brother, slipped off, as her mother continued in a raucous whisper, "Now if that young miss don't deserve a thorough good 'iding! I'd take the skin off yer if any of yer did such a fing, strite I would. Drat yer, keep stilt cawn't yer—you'll rouse the brute!"