"This cops the biscuit."
She was staring, with wide-open eyes, at a strip of pasteboard which was in the centre of the necklace, so that it was surrounded by a stream of light. It was a gentleman's visiting-card. On it was engraved "Earl of Bermondsey." She glared at it, as if she fancied that her seeing sense must be playing her tricks. Her voice, when she spoke, was vibrant; in it there was a curious ringing.
"Well, if this don't take the blooming barrowful, straight it does. 'Earl of Bermondsey'! If that ain't the bloke she was a-talking of. If this ain't a case of Queer Street, I'm a daisy!"
She picked the card up between her finger and thumb gingerly, as if she was afraid it might burn her. She turned it over; on the reverse something was scribbled in pencil. Not being skilled in reading illegible handwriting, it was with difficulty she deciphered it: "With Mr Jack Smith's compliments."
"And who may Mr Jack Smith be, I'd like to know, when he's at home. Anyhow, one thing's certain sure, this little lot ain't meant for me. I don't know nothing about no Jack Smith, nor yet about no Earl of Bermondsey neither, and I don't want to; and as for oily foreigners, I can't abide 'em. I'll just take the entire boiling to Miss Graham. Perhaps she'll be able to twig the bloke's little lay; it's more than I can."
II
Lizzie Emmett had already departed some time when fresh visitors made an unceremonious entry into her empty room. The door was opened and, without giving any premonitory notice of her intention, a girl came in.
"Lizzie!" she cried. Then perceived that there was no one there. "Well, if Lizzie isn't out!" She slightly raised her voice. "Tom, Lizzie's out, but she's not gone far, because she hasn't locked the door. You can come in--I'll give you leave. We'll wait for her."
There entered the room, with something of a shuffle, a man with a rough, untrimmed brown beard. He was big and broad, also, it seemed, a little shy; attired, obviously, in his best clothes. He seemed ill at ease in them, as if, somehow, they deprived his limbs of their wonted freedom. He gripped the brim of his brown billycock with both his large red hands. There was on his good-natured face a mixture of amusement with confusion, as though he was in possession of some happiness of which he was, at one and the same time, proud yet ashamed.
The girl looked him up and down, as if searching for something wrong in his costume or his bearing.