Barnabas could almost see the man’s eyes—passionate grey eyes—fixed on him as he remembered the words. And it was the memory of those eyes that Pippa’s eyes had awakened in him, and with their memory had brought the other scenes before him. The memory had awakened as he had watched her listening entranced to the story of “The Sleeping Beauty.” He had seen the eyes of his friend Kostolitz looking at him from the small pale face, and suddenly he had seen the whole wonderful likeness the child bore to the man. Kostolitz was dead, had been dead now many years. Had he left behind him this scrap of humanity, holding perhaps a spirit as poetical and intense as his own, to battle with the world? If it were so, for the sake of that friendship, it must be protected. And something told Barnabas that he was not mistaken in his belief.
He turned now into the small dark street. He found the house whose number Pippa had given him, and knocked on the door. It was opened by a large, slatternly woman with a watery eye.
“That you, Pippa?” she exclaimed. “’Ere, you come in, and I’ll give you somethink staying hout like this.”
Then she saw Barnabas. Visions of N.S.P.C.C. inspectors rose suddenly before her mind. Mrs. Higgins quailed inwardly.
“Well?” she asked, and her voice was truculent because her spirit was quaking, “and wot can I do for you, sir?”
“Am I,” asked Barnabas suavely, “addressing Mrs. Higgins?”
“That’s my nime,” replied the lady, arms akimbo.
“I believe,” continued Barnabas, still suavely, “that you have had charge of a child—a little girl named Pippa.”
“I ’ave,” said Mrs. Higgins defiantly, “and a more hungrateful, huntruthful, little baggage I hain’t never set heyes on. Hif you ’ave hanythink to say about ’er, per’aps you’ll kindly step hinside.”
Barnabas stepped into the small passage. It was ill-smelling, redolent of dirt and boiled cabbage. Mrs. Higgins herself breathed gin. She was, however, at the moment tolerably sober.