'Winnie! Winnie! Winnie!' I murmured. 'Did she seem emaciated,
Wilderspin? Did she seem as though she wanted food?'
'Heaven, no!' exclaimed my mother.
'No,' replied Wilderspin firmly. 'On that point who is a better judge than the painter of "Faith and Love"? She did not want food. The colour of the skin was not—was not—such as I have seen—when a woman is dying for want of food.'
'God bless you, Wilderspin, God bless you! But what then?—what followed?'
'Well, Mr. Aylwin, I stood for some time gazing at her, muttering thanks to my mother for what I had found. I then went up to her, and asked her for a box of matches. She held me out a box, mechanically, as it seemed, and, when I had taken it of her, she held out her hand just as though she had been a real earthly beggar-girl; but that was part of the beneficent illusion of Heaven.'
'That was for the price, don't you know?' said Sleaford. 'What did you give her?'
'I gave her a shilling, my lord, which she looked at for some time in a state of bewilderment. She then began to feel about her as if for something.'
'She was feelin' for the change, don't you know?' said Sleaford, not in the least degree perceiving how these interruptions of a prosaic mind were maddening me.
'I told her that I wanted to speak to her,' continued Wilderspin, 'and asked her where she lived. She gave me the same bewildered, other-world look with which she had regarded the shilling, a look which seemed to say, "Go away now: leave me alone!" As I did not go, she began to appear afraid of me, and moved away towards Temple Bar, and then crossed the street. I followed, as far behind as I could without running the danger of losing sight of her, to a wretched place running out of Great Queen Street. Holborn, which I afterwards found was called Primrose Court, and when I got there she had disappeared in one of the squalid houses opening into the court. I knocked at the first door once or twice before an answer came, and then a tiny girl with the face of a woman opened it. "Is there a beggar-girl living here?" I asked. "No," answered the child in a sharp, querulous voice. "You mean Meg Gudgeon's gal wot sings and does the rainy-night dodge. She lives next house." And the child slammed the door in my face. I knocked at the next door, and after waiting for a minute it was opened by a short, middle-aged woman, with black eyes and a flattened nose, who stared at me, and then said, "A Quaker, by the looks o' ye." She had the strident voice of a raven, and she smelt, I thought, of gin.'
'But, Mr. Wilderspin, Mr. Wilderspin, you said the girl was safe!'