As he spoke the door opened, and the parlourmaid showed in a tall, handsome woman in a nurse's dress.
Murray looked from her to Sir Edmund.
"I had wanted you to hear what Nurse Edith had to tell us, but after what you have said——"
"Yes," said Edmund; "I will leave you and I will write to you to-night."
CHAPTER XXVIII
DINNER AT TWO SHILLINGS
Edmund Grosse was in great moral and great physical discomfort that evening. He dined, actually for the first time, in just such an Italian café as he had described to Molly. After climbing up a very narrow, dirty staircase, the hot air heavy with smells, he had emerged into a small back and front room holding some half-dozen tables, at each of which four people could be seated. Through the open windows the noises of the street below came into collision with the clatter of plates and knives and forks. The heat was intense, the cloths were not clean, neither were the hands of the two waiters who rushed about with a certain litheness and facility of motion unlike any Englishman.
Edmund sat down wearily at a table as near the window as possible, and at which several people had been dining, perhaps well, but certainly not tidily.