"More than twenty inside the house, and I don't know how many there are outside--I know the pavement's getting blocked. The drawing-room is full, and the hall is crammed. Queer ones some of them are; they don't look to me as if they were the sort to lose their purses. And now the lady whose card I brought up to you has rung the bell, and says that she insists on seeing you at once."
"Show her up, and, when I ring, show her down again. Then send them up one after the other. I'll get rid of them as fast as I can. And, Saunders, if ever you find a purse lose it again directly, and don't breathe a word of it to anyone!"
III.
In came a lady, looking every inch a Mrs. Chillingby-Harkworth--tall, portly, middle-aged, richly dressed. As she eyed me through a pair of long-handled spy-glasses her volubility was amazing.
"May I inquire your name, sir?"
"Burley is my name, madam."
"Then, Mr. Burley, I have to inform you I was never treated with so much indignity before. I come here in answer to an advertisement, at great personal inconvenience to myself, and I am shown into a room with a number of most extraordinary characters; and one person, who, I am sure, was the worse for drink, asks me the most impertinent questions, and when I appeal for protection to another individual, he tells me that he has enough to do in attending to his own business without interfering with other people's, and I have positively to ring the bell twice before I can receive any proper attention."
"I am sorry that you should have suffered any unpleasantness in my house. May I ask if you have lost a purse?"
"I can't say I have--at least, not for years. I only lost one purse in my life, and that was when I was quite a child--I've always taken too much care of my things to lose them. But the friend of a niece of mine, who was staying with me a week or two ago, took her little boy to the Zoological Gardens, and she lost her purse. She hadn't the faintest notion where or how, and when I saw the advertisement I thought I would call and see if it was hers."
"May I ask you to describe the purse which your friend lost?"