"Are they business matters?"
"Not exactly; but still——"
"Time is money; an hour is half-a-crown." He drew out his watch, and made a note of the time in his pocketbook. "A quarter to eleven, miss. If I didn't charge for time, what would become of my clients? Neglected; their interests ruined; the favorable moment gone. If I could tell you of a lady I established two years ago in one of the brewery-houses and what she's made of it, and what she says of me, you would be astonished. A grateful heart! and no better brandy-and-water, hot, with a slice of lemon, in the Whitechapel Road. But you were about to say, miss——"
"She was going to begin with a hymn of praise, Uncle Bunker, paid in advance, like the rest. Gratitude for favors to come. But if you like to tell about the lady, do. Miss Kennedy will only charge you half-a-crown an hour. I'll mark time."
"I think, young man," said Mr. Bunker, "that it is time you should go to your work. Stepney is not the place for sniggerin' peacocks; they'd better have stayed in the United States."
"I am waiting till you have found me a place, too," the young man replied. "I too would wish to experience the grateful heart. It is peculiar to Whitechapel."
"I was going to say," Angela went on, "that I hear you were connected with old Mr. Messenger for many years."
"I was," Mr. Bunker replied, and straightened his back with pride. "I was—everybody knows that I was his confidential factotum and his familiar friend, as David was unto Jonathan."
"Indeed! I used to—to—hear about him formerly a great deal."
"Which made his final behavior the more revolting," Mr. Bunker continued, completing his sentence.