"He's perfectly right. Anyhow, I am sure he always finishes a story when he begins it. I want the rest of what happened. Only I want this one cut short—not too prosy, please! Did you give that little boy the farthing cake?"
"I gave him a halfpenny. He ignored my application for change, and walked away hand-in-hand with his friend towards a shop. I accompanied the cab on foot to the end of Tallack Street, where we found the blooming board, and decided on its illegible character. But there was no doubt the piece of land was the one Illingworth had shown us on the map. The fictitious motor-garage was a place that could only have been a source of danger to rash intruders. We exclaimed together that there were no premises, and the cabman endorsed our opinion. At this juncture an exacerbated female rushed from a doorway to intercept and chastise, if possible, a little girl about ten years old, who had been peering at her through a window on the ground-floor. This little girl slipped through an impassable orifice and got away, shouting derision, but pursued by the woman...."
"Who was more than half afraid of her." Thus Mr. Arkroyd parenthetically.
"I agree with you. However, she left her door open, and the little girl, whom I think we may consider to be identified as Eliza Ann Coupland, came out timidly, and sucked a corner of her neck-handkerchief in our immediate neighbourhood. She seemed to regard the clash between the other little girl and her mother as normal, and appeared to court conversation with us...."
"It's not her mother. It's her aunt. I know the people." The interruption is Judith's. "But go on."
"Her aunt. Our conversation with her was handicapped by her shyness; also by her objection to removing the handkerchief from her mouth. But she appeared to be attracted to us by a kind of fascination, showing itself in a fixed gaze in a direction contrary to the pull of the handkerchief. Her aunt's injunction to her to put it out of her mouth and answer the gentleman led the gentleman to prevail on the aunt to withdraw. We then understood her to refer us to a friend, Bridget Hicks, for local information...."
"Exactly. And Bridget Hicks called you a Cure."
"That is so. With what justice I am not in a position to say, without a more exact acquaintance with the meaning of the term. Bridget Hicks was the little girl who had fled before the wrath of the aunt. She joined her friend on witnessing the discomfiture of that lady by the tactics of your accomplished brother, who, I think, impressed her as Royalty."
"Very well, then!—it comes to this." It is Judith who is reporting progress. "The last time you spoke in the train was about a blind beggar whose little girl walks him about, and lives in that abominable slum papa has allowed to be built on the Cazenove estate, where I sent you because there was a board with something about vacant premises suitable for a factory on it. Why couldn't you say so at once?"
"May I be pardoned for suggesting," Scipio replies with a reinforcement of his sententious manner, which had lapsed slightly, "that, had I done so, a lengthy cross-examination would have been necessary to put my hearers in possession of details I have been able to supply."