“Would you object, sir, stopping at my house for five minutes?” he asked.
“Certainly not,” returned the knight, “I am in no hurry.”
Number 666 stopped the cab, leaped out and disappeared through a narrow passage. In less than five minutes a very tall gentlemanly man issued from the same passage and approached them. Little Di opened her blue eyes to their very uttermost. It was her policeman in plain clothes!
She did not like the change at all at first, but before the end of the drive got used to him in his new aspect—all the more readily that he seemed to have cast off much of his stiffness and reserve with his blue skin.
Near the metropolitan railway station in Whitechapel the cab was dismissed, and Giles led the father and child along the crowded thoroughfare until they reached Commercial Street, along which they proceeded a short distance.
“We are now near some of the worst parts of London, sir,” said Giles, “where great numbers of the criminal and most abandoned characters dwell.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Richard, who did not seem to be much gratified by the information.
As for Di, she was nearly crying. The news that her boy was a thief and was born in the midst of such naughty people had fallen with chilling influence on her heart, for she had never thought of anything but the story-book “poor but honest parents!”
“What large building is that?” inquired the knight, who began to wish that he had not given way to his daughter’s importunities, “the one opposite, I mean, with placards under the windows.”
“That is the well-known Home of Industry, instituted and managed by Miss Macpherson and a staff of volunteer workers. They do a deal of good, sir, in this neighbourhood.”