When Judith came out she looked round in some surprise: "What has become of Bertie, Mr. Thorne?"
"Gone to the bookseller's," said Percival: "shall we walk on and meet him?"
They went together down the gray, slushy street. The wayfarers seemed unusually coarse and jostling that evening, Percival thought, the pavement peculiarly miry, the flaring gaslights very cruel to the unloveliness of the scene.
"Mr. Thorne," Judith began, "I am glad of this opportunity. We haven't met many times before to-day."
"Twice," said Percival.
She looked at him, a faint light of surprise in her eyes. "Ah! twice," she repeated. "But you know Bertie well. You used often to come at one time, when I was away?"
"Oh yes, I saw a good deal of Bertie," he replied, remembering how he had taken a fancy to the boy.
"And he used to talk to me about you. I don't feel as if we were quite strangers, Mr. Thorne."
"Indeed, I hope not," said Percival, eluding a baker's boy and reappearing at her side.
"I've another reason for the feeling, too, besides Bertie's talk," she went on. "Once, six or seven years ago, I saw your father. He came in one evening, about some business I think, and I still remember the very tone in which he talked of you. I was only a school-girl then, but I could not help understanding something of what you were to him."