'I'm afraid there isn't time,' she returned, looking flurried; 'and the manageress doesn't approve of anybody wasting it. Will you write your name in our visitors' book?'
'With pleasure,' I said; 'and I'll come again whenever I feel that I want anything.' And I wrote my name—badly, of course, as people always do in visitors' books, but with the lively satisfaction people always experience in writing their names—why, I've never been able to discover. I passed the manageress on my way out. She was confronting a pair of ladies, an old and a young one, in black, who leaned on their parasols with an air of amiable indecision, and falteringly addressed her: 'I had a day and a half last week,' one of them said, rather weakly; 'is there?—do you want me for anything this——?'
The manageress looked at her with some impatience. 'If I want you I'll send for you, Miss Gypsum,' she said. The door closed upon me at that moment, so I don't know how Miss Gypsum got away.
As for me, I walked through Cockspur Street and through Waterloo Place, and so into Piccadilly, reflecting upon Mrs. Pragge, and Miss Camblewell, and all their uncertainties. Standing in the lee of a large policeman on one of your valuable iron refuges in the middle of the street, a flounced black-and-white parasol suddenly shut down almost in my face. The lady belonging to it leaned over her carriage and said: 'How d'ye do, Miss———? Dear me, how stupid I am about names! Miss Chicago-young-lady-who-ran-away-without-getting-my-address? Now I've found you, just pop in——'
'I must ask you to drive on, madam,' the policeman said.
'As soon as this young lady has popped in. There! Now, my dear, what did the relation say? I've been longing to know.'
And before I realised another thing I was rolling up Regent Street statefully in the carriage of Mrs. Torquilin.