The boy turned and hurried out. He ran swiftly, crying as he went, down the hill to the gipsies’ van.
CHAPTER X.
Myddleton West still lived in the rooms over a fancy wool shop in Fetter Lane, which he had rented when he first came to London. At times he had thought of going into one of the Inns close by, and had inspected chambers there, but he found so many ghosts on every landing that, although a man of fair courage, he became affrighted. Over the fancy wool shop in Fetter Lane, no shadows interfered. The Misses Langley kept his rooms carefully dusted, seeing that the panel photograph of an attractive young nurse, with a thoughtful face, never moved from its position of honour on the mantelpiece. Myddleton West was getting on in the world and earning agreeable cheques every month; like many young men in this position, he found it difficult to increase his expenses without taking inordinate pains. Consequently he gave up attempts in this direction, and remained in Fetter Lane, writing early and late on any subject that the world offered, finding this the only way to keep his mind from the thoughtful young woman of the panel portrait. Rarely she took brief holiday from the ward of which she was sister, and they met by appointment at an aerated bread shop, where, over chocolate, she knitted her pretty forehead and talked with the concentrated wisdom of at least three hundred young women, on Myddleton West becoming urgent in his protestations of love, reproving him with a quaint air of austerity that at once annoyed and delighted him. He found no argument in favour of their marriage that she did not instantly defeat by a proud reference to the work which Fate had assigned to her. This was their only contentious subject; once free of it they were on excellent terms, and West took her on from the tea-rooms to private views and to afternoon performances at the theatre, and to concerts, and was an enchanted man until the moment came for her to fly back in her grey silk cloak to the hospital.
“Hullo!” said Myddleton West.
“Excuse me interrupting, sir, in your writing work.”
“Doesn’t matter, Miss Langley.”
“As I often say to my sister,” persisted the thin lady at the doorway, “no one can possibly write sense if they’re to be continually broken in on—if I may use the expression—and—”
“Somebody called to see me?” asked West, patiently.
“And badgered out of their life,” concluded the lady. “I’m sure writing must be quite sufficient a tax on the brains without—”
“Miss Langley.”