"Yes," he said; "there was a Meynell in this street when I was a young man—Christian Meynell, a carpet-maker by trade. The business is still carried on—and a very old business it is, for it was an old business in Meynell's time; but Meynell died before I married, and his name is pretty well forgotten in Aldersgate-street by this time."
"Had he no sons?" I asked.
"Well, yes; he had one son, Samuel, a kind of companion of mine. But he didn't take to the business, and when his father died he let things go anyhow, as you may say. He was rather wild, and died two or three years after his father."
"Did he die unmarried?"
"Yes. There was some talk of his marrying a Miss Dobberly, whose father was a cabinet-maker in Jewin-street; but Samuel was too wild for the Dobberlys, who were steady-going people, and he went abroad, where he was taken with some kind of fever and died."
"Was this son the only child?"
"No; there were two daughters. The younger of them married; the elder went to live with her—and died unmarried, I've heard say."
"Do you know whom the younger sister married?" I asked.
"No. She didn't marry in London. She went into the country to visit some friends, and she married and settled down in those parts—wherever it might be—and I never heard of her coming back to London again. The carpet business was sold directly after Samuel Meynell's death. The new people kept up the name for a good twenty years—'Taylor, late Meynell, established 1693,' that's what was painted on the board above the window—but they've dropped the name of Meynell now. People forget old names, you see, and it's no use keeping to them after they're forgotten."
Yes, the old names are forgotten, the old people fade off the face of the earth. The romance of Matthew Haygarth seemed to come to a lame and impotent conclusion in this dull record of dealers in carpeting.