"I want all to-night's papers:" her voice fell with an agreeable cadence on Ryecroft's ears. He was singularly susceptible to the cadences of the human voice, and he thought he had never heard a sweeter. She took a shilling out of her purse, and, rather to his surprise, he saw that her purse was small, black and worn.
"How much?" she asked gently.
The boy hesitated, and then answered, "Five-pence halfpenny."
She handed him a shilling. "You can keep the change," she said, and a very charming smile quivered across her face, "for yourself."
The man who was watching her felt touched—unreasonably moved. "Thank God," he said to himself, "that, unlike many of her friends, she has nothing to do with the C.O.S.!"
Then to Ryecroft's surprise, instead of going on as he expected her to do—he had already made up his mind that she was taking the papers home to an invalid father, or to a brother who had hurt himself in one of those mad games in which, as the watcher knew well, the young English oligarch delights to spend his spare time—the young lady turned, and crossed over again on to the bridge, but this time she chose the other side, the side which commands the more beautiful view of the London river.
"Dear me," he said to himself, "the plot thickens!" and then he suddenly told himself that of course she was going back to the hospital. The person she was going to see had asked for an evening paper, and in her generosity she had bought them all.
But on the bridge she stayed her steps, and, opening one of the papers, spread it out against the parapet, and began eagerly reading it, unheeding of the human stream flowing to and fro behind her.
Ryecroft gently approached closer and closer to her, and at last he was able to see what it was she was bending over and reading with such intentness: "General Lingard's Home-coming." "Splendid Reception at Victoria Station." So was the column headed, and already her eyes had travelled down to the last paragraph:
"To conclude: by his defeat of the great Mahomedan Emir of Bobo, General Lingard has added to the British Crown another magnificent jewel in the Sultanate of Amadawa."