He smiled to himself. “Talk of angels, etc.,” he mused.
The next moment he was greeting his callers. Madge Finisterre looked, in Tom Hammond’s eyes, more radiant now than ever.
“Fancy, Mr. Hammond,” she laughed, when the greetings were over, “George and I met at Dover! He had come south to see a friend off from Dover, and was on the pier when I landed from the Calais boat. We’ve been down to that dear old country house, but I wanted to do some shopping, and to see how you looked as editor-in-chief and general boss of the biggest daily paper in the world.”
Tom Hammond’s eyes flashed with a pleased light at her confession, which implied that she had thought of him, even as he had thought of her. He noted, too, how an extra shade of colour warmed the clear skin of her cheeks as she made her confession.
“Because,” she went on, “all the world declares that ‘The Courier’ is the premier paper of the world, and everyone who is anyone—in the know of things, I mean—knows that Mr. Tom Hammond is ‘The Courier.’”
The talk, for a few minutes, was “shop.”
“You don’t go in for a column of comic,” Madge presently said. “If you did, I could give you an item, we, George and I, heard in the train as we ran up to town. There were two of your English parsons in our carriage, talking in that high-faluting note that always reminds me of your high-pitched church service,—‘dearly-beloved-brethren’ note.
“Well, the two parsons were telling yarns one against the other—chestnuts were cheap, I assure you,—and one of them told a story he tacked on to General Booth—the last time I heard it, it was told of Spurgeon. He said that the General was going down Whitechapel, and, seeing the people pouring into a show, and wondering what there was so powerfully attractive to the masses in these shows, he determined to go into this particular one. It was advertised as a ‘Museum of Biblical Curiosities.’ Just as he got in, the showman was exhibiting a very rusty old sword, and saying,
“‘Now, yere’s a werry hinterestin’ hobject. This is the sword wot Balaam ’it ’is hass wiv, ’cos ’ee wouldn’t go.’ Booth speaks up, and says,
“‘Hold hard there, my friend; you’re getting a little mixed. Balaam hadn’t got a sword. He said, “Would that I had a sword.”’