On turning into Eaton Place he came upon a group of people standing around something that lay on the pavement. It was an old woman, a tattered, bedraggled creature with a pinched and pallid face. “Is it an accident?” a gentleman was saying, and somebody answered, “No, sir, she's gorn off in a faint.” “Why doesn't some one take her to the hospital?” said the gentleman, and then, like the Levite, he passed by on the other side. The butcher's cart drew up at the curb, and the butcher jumped down, saying, “There never is no p'lice about when they're wanted for anythink.”
“But they aren't wanted here, friend,” said somebody from the outside. It was John Storm, and he was pushing his way through the crowd.
“Will somebody knock at that door, please?” He lifted the old thing in his arms and carried her toward the canon's house. The footman looked aghast. “Let me know when the canon returns,” said John, and then marched up the carpeted stairs to his rooms.
An hour afterward the old woman opened her eyes and said: “Anythink gorn wrong? Wot's up? Is it the work'us?”
It was a clear case of destitution and collapse. John Storm began to feed the old creature with the chicken and milk sent up for his own lunch.
Some time in the afternoon he heard the voice and step of the vicar in the room below. Going down to the study, he was about to knock; but the voice continued in varying tones, now loud, now low. During a pause he rapped, and then, with noticeable irritation, the voice cried, “Come in!”
He found the vicar, with a manuscript in hand, rehearsing his Sunday's sermon. It was a shock to John, but it helped him to understand what his uncle had said about the canon's Pentecost.
The canon's brow was clouded. “Ah, is it you? I was sorry to see you getting out of a third-class carriage to-day, Mr. Storm.”
John answered that it was the poor man's class, and therefore, he thought, it ought to be his.
“You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Storm. Besides, to tell you the truth, I don't choose that my assistant clergy——”