'Well, yes,' paid slip, turning round sharply; 'but may I ax who the dickens you are?—an' what makes you so cut up about a pore woman's darter? It's right-on beautiful to see how kind gentlemen is nowadays': and she turned and tried, stumbling, to lead the way downstairs.
As we left the room I turned round to look at it. The picture of the mattress, now nearly hidden in the shadows—the picture of the other furniture in the room—two chairs—or rather one and a part of a chair, for the rails of the hack were gone—a table, a large brown jug, the handle of which had been replaced by a piece of string, and a white washhand-basin, with most of the rim broken away, and a shallow tub apparently used for a bath—seemed to sink into my flesh as though bitten in by the etcher's aquafortis. Winifred's sleeping-room!
'Of course she wasn't her daughter,' said Wilderspin meditatively, as we stood on the stairs.
'Not my darter! Why, in course she was. What an imperent thing to say, sure_lie_!'
'There is one thing I wish to say to you,' said he to the woman. 'When I agreed with you as to the sum to be paid for the model's sittings, it was clearly understood that she was to sit to no other artist, and that the match-selling was to cease.
'Well, and 'ave I broke my word?'
'A person has heard her singing and seen her selling baskets,' I said.
'The person tells a lie,' said the woman, with a dogged and sullen look, and in a voice that grew thicker with every word. 'Ain't there sich things as doubles?'
At these last words my heart gave a sudden leap. We left the house, and neither of us spoke till we got into the Strand.
'Did you see the—body at all?' I asked Wilderspin.