Sir James admitted that there were, and advised her to reflect on a few of them.
The little plain one did reflect—with the aid of the chandelier—and came to the sudden conviction that the lady’s name had to do with flowers. “Not roses—no, nor yet violets,” she said, with an air of intense mental application, for the maiden’s memory was largely dependent on association of ideas; “it might ’ave been marigolds, though it don’t seem likely. Stay, was it water—?—Oh! it was lilies! Yes, I ’ave it now: Miss Lilies-somethink.”
“Think again, now,” said the Baronet, “everything depends on the ‘something,’ for Miss Lilies is not so extravagantly queer as you seem to think her name was.”
“That’s true, sir,” said the perplexed maid, with a last appealing gaze at the chandelier, and beginning with the first letter of the alphabet—Miss Lilies A— Lilies B— Lilies C—, etcetera, until she came to K. “That’s it now. I ’ave it almost. It ’ad to do with lots of lilies, I’m quite sure—quantities, it must ’ave been.”
On Sir James suggesting that quantities did not begin with a K the little plain one’s feelings were slightly hurt, and she declined to go any further into the question. Sir James was therefore obliged to rest content with what he had learned, and continued his search in Pimlico. There he spent several hours in playing, with small shopkeepers and policemen, a game somewhat analogous to that which is usually commenced with the words “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” The result was that eventually he reached Number 9 Purr Street, and found himself in the presence of Miss Lillycrop.
That lady, however, damped his rising hopes by saying that she did not know where George Aspel was to be found, and that he had suddenly disappeared—to her intense regret—from the bird-warehouse in which he had held a situation. It belonged to the brothers Blurt, whose address she gave to her visitor.
Little Tottie Bones, who had heard the conversation through the open parlour door, could have told where Aspel was to be found, but the promise made to her father sealed her lips; besides, particular inquiries after any one were so suggestive to her of policemen, and being “took,” that she had a double motive to silence.
Mr Enoch Blurt could throw no light on the subject, but he could, and did, add to Sir James’s increasing knowledge of the youth’s reported dissipation, and sympathised with him strongly in his desire to find out Aspel’s whereabouts. Moreover, he directed him to the General Post-Office, where a youth named Maylands, a letter-sorter—who had formerly been a telegraph message-boy,—and an intimate friend of Aspel, was to be found, and might be able to give some information about him, though he (Mr Blurt) feared not.
Phil Maylands could only say that he had never ceased to make inquiries after his friend, but hitherto without success, and that he meant to continue his inquiries until he should find him.
Sir James Clubley therefore returned in a state of dejection to the sympathetic Miss Lillycrop, who gave him a note of introduction to a detective—the grave man in grey,—a particular friend and ally of her own, with whom she had scraped acquaintance during one of her many pilgrimages of love and mercy among the poor.