John Storm felt humiliated and ashamed. The hairdressers' assistants were grinning at him. He went out, feeling that Glory was farther than ever from him now, and if he met her they might not speak. But he could not drag himself away. In the darkness under a lamp at the other side of the street he stood and waited. Shoddy broughams drove up, with drivers in shabby livery, bringing “turns” in wonderful hats and overcoats, over impossible wigs, whiskers, and noses—niggers, acrobats, clowns, and comic singers, who stepped out, shook the straw of their carriage carpets off their legs, and passed in at the stage entrance.
At length the commissionaire appeared at the door and whistled, and a hansom cab rattled up to the end of the court. Then a lady muffled in a cape, with the hood drawn over her head, and carrying a bouquet of roses, came out leaning on the arm of a gentleman. She stood a moment by his side and spoke to him and laughed. John heard her laughter. At the next moment she had stepped into the hansom, the door had fallen to, the driver had turned, the gentleman had raised his hat, the light had fallen on the lady's face, and she was leaning forward and smiling. John saw her smiles.
At the next moment the hansom had passed into the illuminated thoroughfares and the group of people had dispersed. John Storm was alone under the lamp in the little dark street, and somewhere in the dark alleys behind him the organ man was still grinding out “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.”
“Weel, what luck on your first night out?” said Mrs. Callender at breakfast in the morning. “Found any of the poor lost things yet?”
“One,” said John, with a rueful face. “Lost enough, though she doesn't know it yet, God help her!”
“They never do at first, laddie. Write to her friends, if she has any.”
“Her friends?”
“Nothing like home influences, ye ken.”
“I will—I must! It's all I can do now.”