"That's what I thought," he said. "And when you rub the penny they all come out."
"Did you notice the girl's dress?" asked Doris, "and the way her hair was done, and the blue china dog on the mantelpiece?"
Cuthbert shook his head.
"Let's have another go," he said, and he rubbed the penny again as hard as he could.
This time he noticed the room, with its queer high-backed piano, and a picture of people hunting hanging on the wall, and the blue china dog, and the girl's dress, and the curious way in which she had done her hair. It was pulled back from her forehead into a smooth sort of bundle behind her head; and her dress was all in terraces, like a wedding-cake, or a theatre turned upside down.
"It must have been a good long time," said Cuthbert, "since she gave him the penny. Do you think he was the man who fell off the horse?"
"Oh, he couldn't have been," said Doris. "He was much too young; and besides I'm sure that he was never a carpenter."
She shivered a little.
"We ought to be getting home," she said, but Cuthbert lingered for a moment, looking at the penny.
"I expect hundreds of people," he said, "have had it in their pockets and never known what was inside it."