"What news can I have to give you?" demanded Mr. Tant, with an almost aggressive glance at his friend. "Oh, I know what you're going to say," he added rapidly as he raised his hand—"that that is the best comment on what you have said. But, at all events, we live respectably—not in hovels."
"Respectable is the word," said Gilbert, with something of a sigh. "And yet I'm sure that you really have news—of a sort. Come—a bargain with you: you shall give me your news, bit by bit, and item by item; and I'll see if I can match it from my experience here."
"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Jordan Tant, shifting uneasily on his chair, and finally drawing up his legs until his heels rested on the front wooden rail of it—"in the first place, Miss Enid wonders what has become of you, and is naturally somewhat troubled about you." He said it sulkily, with the air of one to whom the delivery of the message was a disagreeable task.
"Exactly. And the fair Enid is in that drawing-room which is like a hot-house, and is yawning the hours away, and glancing occasionally at the clock, to determine how long it is since she had lunch, and how best she shall get through the time before tea is announced. To match that, my item of news is of a certain little lady who has a habit of tucking up her sleeves, the better to get through hours that are all too short for the work that must fill them, who is afraid to glance at a clock, for fear it should tell her how time is flying; and who never by any chance had a best frock yet that wasn't almost too shabby to wear before it was called best at all. Go on."
"Oh—so that's the secret, is it?" exclaimed Mr. Tant, nodding his head like a smooth-plumaged young bird. "There's a woman in Arcadia Street—eh?"
"Beware how you speak of her lightly," said Gilbert. "In Arcadia Street are many women; they hang out of the windows, and they scream at their children, and they tell their husbands exactly what their opinion is concerning the characters of those husbands whenever the unfortunate men are not at work. But—mark the difference, my Tant!—there is but one woman worthy of the name, and I have found her. She lives next door."
"Then I've seen her," replied Jordan Tant. "Rather pretty, perhaps—but pale and shabby."
"Ah—she hadn't got her best frock on," said Gilbert. "You have to wait for Sundays to see the best frock; and then you have to pretend that it isn't really an old frock pretending to be best. Where did you see her?"
"Sticking a card in the window—something about apartments or—lodgings," said Mr. Tant. "I think she thought there was some chance that I might be insane enough to want to live in Arcadia Street."