At nine o’clock on the morn­ing of Wed­nes­day the tenth of No­vem­ber, Mr. Bal­dock had the money on his desk be­fore she was through the door: a ten-pound note, two sov­er­eigns, and twelve shil­lings in sil­ver, set out in a row along the edge of the blot­ter like a sum that has been done in ad­vance and is wait­ing to be checked.

“Twelve guineas,” he said. “To the Author, on de­liv­ery. You are not early.”

“You said the tenth.”

“I said the tenth, and you have come on the tenth, at nine, which you have never done in your life. You are gen­er­ally a day be­fore your time or a fort­night. Exactly on time means that you have been think­ing.” He held out his hand for the num­ber, and weighed it, and did not open it. “A sheet and a half. Sit down, Miss Lyd­iard, and count it. I should not like it said in the Row that I paid the Author short.”

She coun­ted it. She would have coun­ted it if he had not asked her, and he knew it, and watched her do it with the grav­ity of a man watch­ing a rite he does not be­long to but re­spects. It came to twelve pounds twelve shil­lings ex­actly, and she put the note and the sov­er­eigns into her glove, where they did not fit, and the sil­ver into her retic­ule, where it did.

“Mr. Hind­ley,” said Mr. Bal­dock, “has not de­livered.”

“I did not sup­pose he would.”

“Nor did I. He has called in Gros­venor Square three times since the four­teenth, I am told, and here not at all; and he has a cold, which he caught, I am also told, stand­ing about in the Square being shown the rail­ings.” He opened his drawer, and put the eighth num­ber into it, and shut it. “I agreed to pay the Author twelve guineas on de­liv­ery. I have paid the Author twelve guineas on de­liv­ery. If the Author is Mr. Hind­ley, I have paid the wrong per­son, and he is wel­come

to come up those stairs and tell me so.”

Clem­ency thought of young Mr. Hind­ley com­ing up those stairs to ex­plain to Mr. Bal­dock that he was owed twelve guineas for a thing he had not writ­ten, and found the pic­ture so sat­is­fact­ory that she was ob­liged to look at the win­dow.

“He will not come,” she said.

“He will not come. He is a plain man; he will tell you so him­self. He has got a din­ner out of it, and a lord, and a cold; and be­fore Christ­mas he will have Dal­gleish at the same table, and his lord­ship will have two Authors for the price of one soup, and not one of the three of them will have writ­ten a line.” Mr. Bal­dock took off his spec­tacles, which was his way of chan­ging the sub­ject. “That is not why I asked you to sit down.

“I shall have no house at Christ­mas. You know that. What you do not know, be­cause I have told nobody, is that I may have no printer either. Tuck­ett has been brought to print the No­vem­ber num­ber and the Decem­ber; but they bring Carlile up for judg­ment on Tues­day, and when they have given him years, as they will, every printer be­tween Temple Bar and Lud­gate who has set a line for a Whig since August will want his money be­fore he sets an­other, and I shall have none to give him be­fore Lady Day.” He said it with­out any em­phasis at all, as he gave the price of paper. “There may be a Lud­gate in Janu­ary. There may not.”

Clem­ency sat with her glove shut on the twelve guineas and did the sum, be­cause she could not help it. The quarter’s rent fell due at Christ­mas, as Mr. Bal­dock’s lease did: twelve pounds, on the twenty-fifth, to a land­lord in Salis­bury Square who was not sorry for any­body. She had it in her hand. She had, for the first time since Bread Street, the whole of a quarter’s rent in her hand a month be­fore it was wanted, and a little over; and after it there was the Janu­ary num­ber, which might be prin­ted and might not, and the Feb­ru­ary, which nobody could prom­ise, and Lady Day, which would come whether there was a Lud­gate or no. She had not been frightened about money since the sum­mer. It was not, she dis­covered, a thing one for­got how to do.

“Read that,” said Mr. Bal­dock, and pushed a let­ter across the desk.

It was in a small com­mer­cial hand, on paper of a qual­ity that Mr. Bal­dock did not use and had looked at, she could see, with pro­fes­sional re­sent­ment; and it was from Mr. Rad­cliffe of Albe­marle Street, who was going to Messrs Bald­win, Cradock, and Joy at Christ­mas, and would be glad to take The Mor­timers of Mount Street into their new maga­zine from its first num­ber, at twelve guineas, on Mr. Bal­dock’s

own terms, which he understood to be pay­ment on de­liv­ery and no ques­tions asked.

“He does not ask for the name,” said Clem­ency.

“He does not ask for the name. Bald­win’s asked for the name in Oc­to­ber and got Mr. Hind­ley. Rad­cliffe has been in the trade five-and-twenty years, and he does not ask for what he does not need.” Mr. Bal­dock put his spec­tacles on again. “He knows the twelve guineas, you ob­serve. He did not have that from me.”

“He had it from Mr. Hind­ley.”

“He had it from the Chapter, where Mr. Hind­ley has been telling every­body what he is worth.” Mr. Bal­dock looked at her over the desk, as he had looked at her on the day he gave her the Row’s let­ter, with the ex­pres­sion of a man about to be gen­er­ous and re­solved to be brisk about it, so that nobody should no­tice. “Miss Lyd­iard, I would rather you went to Rad­cliffe at twelve guineas than stayed with me for none. That is all I wished to say, and I have said it.”

Clem­ency looked at the let­ter for some time. It was a very good let­ter. It was the let­ter of a man who knew what every­body in the trade was paid and had made a point of find­ing out what she was paid in par­tic­u­lar, and it did her the cour­tesy of not pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise.

“You may tell Mr. Rad­cliffe,” she said, “that the Author is con­sid­er­ing it. And that it will be twelve guineas, and no name, and the tenth of every month, and that the Author does not dine.”

“You have learnt to bar­gain from Mr. Hind­ley.”

“I have learnt my price from him,” said Clem­ency. “It is the only thing his fam­ily has ever given mine.”

Mr. Bal­dock laughed, and then stopped laugh­ing, and wrote it down: not her words, but a note to Mr. Rad­cliffe in his own short Whig hand, which said that the Author was con­sid­er­ing it, and that it would be twelve guineas, and no name, and the tenth of every month, and that the Author did not dine.

“And Christ­mas?” she said, when he had sanded it.

“Christ­mas will come,” said Mr. Bal­dock, “whether my land­lord is glad of it or not.”

She went down into the Row with twelve pounds twelve shil­lings about her, which was more money than she had car­ried at one time since Bread Street, and walked home by Lud­gate Hill hold­ing her glove shut. The eighth num­ber was in Mr. Bal­dock’s drawer. There was a sen­tence near the end of it that she had writ­ten for one reader, on the Sunday, after the candle was down; and she did not know whether he would see it, or whether, if he saw it, he would know it had been put there

for him, or whether a man who wrote that a thing could be men­ded for noth­ing at all had ever in his life been sent the bill.

*  *  *  *  *

Mr. Kinross took the thir­teenth num­ber to Albe­marle Street him­self, which he had not done since the first, and laid it on the table nearest the door, where Mr. Rad­cliffe was ac­cus­tomed to find only maga­zines that had some­thing in them.

Mr. Rad­cliffe read the first page stand­ing. He read as he al­ways read, for the price, and Mr. Kinross, who had watched him do it for a year, could gen­er­ally tell from the third para­graph what the price would be. This time he could not. Mr. Rad­cliffe read the first page, and turned it, and read the second, and the Warden went down a stair, out of the light, into a kit­chen at Lud­low where a fire was kept for the whole of a castle and the people round it knew to a penny what every man above them cost; and Mr. Rad­cliffe sat down.

“It will lose you more than twenty pounds a month,” he said at last.

“I dare say.”

“Lord Ash­combe will not like it. Lord Ash­combe likes his War­dens on horse­back.” He turned an­other leaf. “It is the best thing you have done.”

Mr. Kinross, who had never been told by Mr. Rad­cliffe that any­thing of his was the best, or the worst, or any­thing at all but the length it was and the day it had come in, found that there was noth­ing whatever to say to this, and said it.

“I am going to Bald­win’s at Christ­mas,” said Mr. Rad­cliffe.

He said it in the voice in which he gave the sales, and with­out look­ing up from the thir­teenth num­ber; and Mr. Kinross, who had been in the room a quarter of an hour, understood that the quarter of an hour had been ar­ranged, and that the num­ber had been read be­fore the no­tice was given so that the no­tice should not be mis­taken for a judg­ment on the num­ber.

“They have offered you the con­duct of it.”

“They have offered me the con­duct of the busi­ness. They have a gen­tle­man to con­duct the rest, who talks well and listens bet­ter, and who will want, be­fore a year is out, to quar­rel with some­body in Edin­burgh; and they want a man un­der­neath him who knows the trade.”

“You know what every­body in it is paid.”

“I know what every­body in it is paid,” said Mr. Rad­cliffe, “and I have been paid the same for nine years, and I find that I should like, be­fore I die, to be one of the people whose pay I know.” He closed the num­ber, and squared it with the edge of the table.

“The deed al­lows it at a quarter’s no­tice. I have given it you at a quarter’s no­tice, less a fort­night, for which I apo­lo­gise. You will want a man.”

“I shall want you.”

“You will want a man,” said Mr. Rad­cliffe again, as though the other had not been said, “who can read the Warden in proof with­out telling the printer whose it is. That is the only qual­i­fic­a­tion. The rest can be taught to any­body who can add.”

Mr. Kinross sat down across the table from him. He had not sat down in that room in a twelve­month ex­cept to read, and the chair was a hard one, and he dis­covered that he had never no­ticed it.

“You will take the Mor­timers,” he said.

“If I can.”

“You do not know who writes them.”

“I know what they are paid. I have offered more.” Mr. Rad­cliffe put the thir­teenth num­ber under his arm, which was where he car­ried everything he val­ued and noth­ing he did not. “I know also who does not write them. Mr. Hind­ley was at the Chapter on Fri­day. He talked about calico for an hour and a half, and he did not once men­tion what a foot­man costs, which a man who knew would not have been able to help. I do not ask for the name. Bald­win’s asked for the name and got a cot­ton-man.”

“And if you knew the name?”

“I should keep it,” said Mr. Rad­cliffe, “as I have kept yours.” He went to the door, and stopped there, as he had stopped at the door of the cham­bers in King’s Bench Walk three weeks be­fore, a mo­ment longer than he need have done. “I shall not tell them at Bald­win’s who writes the Warden. You need not ask it.”

“I did not sup­pose you would.”

“No. It is worth more to me un­told.” He con­sidered this, as he con­sidered everything, for what it would fetch, and ap­peared sat­is­fied. “Good af­ter­noon.”

He went out, with the thir­teenth num­ber under his arm, to send it to the printer; and Mr. Kinross sat on in the hard chair in the of­fice of a maga­zine that he owned and had never once con­duc­ted, and understood that in seven weeks he would be the only man in Lon­don who knew who wrote the Warden, and that he did not know how a maga­zine was brought out.

*  *  *  *  *

On the Fri­day, walk­ing home along the north side of the Square, he was over­taken by Lord Ash­combe, who was show­ing his Author the rail­ings.

His lord­ship had been show­ing them to every­body. Since the first of the month the north side of Gros­venor Square had be­come, to Mr. Kinross’s

slow as­ton­ish­ment, a place that people came to look at; for his lord­ship’s let­ter in the Albe­marle had been read in a great many houses where the Albe­marle was not usu­ally read, and copied into two news­pa­pers, and dis­puted in a third; and the town, which had not no­ticed a rail­ing in Gros­venor Square in sixty years, came now in car­riages to see whether they were at the kerb. Mr. Kinross had found two cler­gy­men on his own pave­ment on the Tues­day with a tape. He had not asked them which side they were on. They had looked, he thought, like men who had laid money on it.

“Kinross!” His lord­ship took his arm. “The very man. You know Mr. Hind­ley. No, you don’t; nobody does yet; that’s the beauty of it. Mr. Hind­ley, Mr. Kinross, my neigh­bour; a Temple man, and reads everything, and says noth­ing, which is the next best thing to being an Author your­self. Mr. Hind­ley is the Mor­timers.”

Mr. Hind­ley was tall, and forty, and had a fine Lan­ca­shire voice with a cold in it, and very good boots that had been soled twice, which Mr. Kinross, who had lately begun to look at boots, ob­served and did not know what to make of. He said that he was a plain man and would not deny it. He said it pleas­antly, as a man says the wind has gone round to the east, and he looked at Mr. Kinross out of a pair of small shrewd eyes that had sized up men across a counter for twenty-eight years and saw no reason to stop now.

“I’m show­ing him the rail­ings,” said Lord Ash­combe. “At the kerb, you see, Hind­ley, ex­actly as you put them. Exactly. Never mind what the puppy says.”

“I’m a plain man, my lord,” said Mr. Hind­ley, “and I’ll say this for them: they’re rail­ings.”

His lord­ship was de­lighted with this, and said it again; and Mr. Kinross ob­served that it com­mit­ted Mr. Hind­ley to noth­ing, and that it was not, in fact, a stu­pid an­swer.

“You will have been a good deal below stairs,” he said, “for the sev­enth num­ber.”

“I’ve read the sev­enth num­ber three times, sir,” said Mr. Hind­ley, “and the six be­fore it. A man should know his own goods.” He said it with per­fect good hu­mour; and Mr. Kinross, who had ex­pec­ted a cot­ton-man who had never opened the Lud­gate, was ob­liged to re­vise him on the spot, and did not like it. “You’ll be mean­ing the kit­chen-maid.”

“I was think­ing of the coal-plate.”

“The plate in the pave­ment where the coals go down.” Mr. Hind­ley nod­ded. “There’s not a child in Man­chester doesn’t know a coal-plate, sir.”

“And what does she see, from under it?”

“Boots,” said Mr. Hind­ley at once. “It’s in the num­ber. Boots, and the wheels of the car­riages going over, and the hem of a gown. Very pretty, I thought it.”

There was a pause, of about the length of a car­riage passing.

Mr. Kinross looked at the road, where the car­riages went, a good eight yards off on the far side of the kerb; and then at the pave­ment, where noth­ing with wheels went but the coal-bar­rows and the cats”-meat man; and he re­membered, as plainly as if it lay open on his knee, that the sev­enth num­ber had said bar­row. It had said bar­row be­cause who­ever wrote it had stood at the foot of an area and looked up, and had seen what went over: boots, and the wheels of a bar­row, and a hem. Nobody who had stood there could have said car­riages. A man who had read it three times, and knew his own goods, and had never in his life stood any­where but on the right side of a counter, had re­membered it as it ought to have been, and put the car­riages back.

“We burn our own coal in Lan­ca­shire,” said Mr. Hind­ley, who had seen some­thing go across the long face op­pos­ite him and did not know what. “The best in Eng­land.”

“There,” said his lord­ship, as though a point had been proved. “You hear him. He’s to dine with me on the fif­teenth of next month, Kinross, with Dal­gleish; the two of ’em at one table, the Warden and the Mor­timers, and I shall ask them each what the other means by it, and you shall make up the table, and say noth­ing, as usual. I de­pend on you.”

Mr. Kinross said that he would make up the table. He watched them go along the north side to­gether: his lord­ship point­ing at rail­ings with his stick, and Mr. Hind­ley nod­ding at them in his fine voice, in his twice-soled boots. Then he went up his own steps, which he had lately begun to no­tice, and let him­self in.

He did not know who wrote the Mor­timers. He knew now, with a cer­tainty that he would have been glad to have about any­thing else, that who­ever wrote them had stood under a coal-plate and looked up and seen a bar­row go over, and that it was not a man who re­membered car­riages. It was the first fact he had pos­sessed about the Author that was not a the­ory, and he car­ried it up­stairs to the lib­rary as a boy car­ries a bird’s egg found in a hedge: very care­fully, and with­out the least idea what will come out of it.

*  *  *  *  *

The bon­net came home on the Thursday, in a band­box, from a mil­liner’s on Lud­gate Hill who had asked a guinea for it and taken eight­een shil­lings, and who had never be­fore been

beaten down by a cus­tomer who did not once raise her voice; and on the Sat­urday morn­ing Lucy’s straw hat went on the fire.

It went on with ce­re­mony. Lucy put it on her­self, in the front room, after break­fast, and stood back to watch it go, with the blue rib­bon already trans­ferred to the new one and the new one already on her head; and the straw, which had been a poor thing in its youth and had not im­proved, caught at once and burnt with a loud com­plain­ing crackle, like a thing that has al­ways known it was not wanted. Kit ap­plauded. Mrs. Lyd­iard said that it would smoke the chim­ney, and it did.

Lucy had found the band­box on her bed, with no card in it. She had thanked Kit for it on the stairs; and Kit, who had been thanked in Oc­to­ber for the rib­bon and had begun, Clem­ency sus­pec­ted, to won­der privately what he had done to de­serve so much grat­it­ude from a sis­ter who had never be­fore been grate­ful for any­thing, re­ceived it with a mod­esty that was be­gin­ning to look strained.

“You are a good brother,” said Lucy, from under the bon­net.

“I try,” said Kit, and looked at Clem­ency, who was read­ing the Chron­icle.

She was read­ing the ad­vert­ise­ments, as she gen­er­ally did, for the prices; for the ad­vert­ise­ments in the Chron­icle told a woman more about Lon­don in a quarter of an hour than the rest of the paper did in a week. A house in Blooms­bury went for a hun­dred and ten pounds a year, with a coach-house. A lady who had been un­for­tu­nate wished to teach the harp. A chaise was for sale, very little used, the owner going abroad, which in the ad­vert­ise­ments meant that the owner was going to the Fleet. And at the foot of the second column, where it had been on the Sat­urday be­fore, and the Sat­urday be­fore that, though she had not then at­ten­ded to it:

She read it twice. It was the house. She would have known it with­out the num­ber, which she had never looked at, by the one clause in it that had not been writ­ten by a man: She must be able to bear a quiet house. That was the woman in the cap. That had been asked her across a kit­chen table, at the foot of el­even steps, with the warmth com­ing out of the door; and she had said that she had borne a great deal of noise and would like to try the other, and had been told to come again on Fri­day, and had not.

The place had been empty for six weeks. She had not thought of that. She had thought of it, when she thought of it at all, as a thing that had happened to her, an af­ter­noon she had got for noth­ing and put into the sev­enth num­ber at four­teen guineas a year; and it had not once oc­curred to her that a cook in Gros­venor Square had been doing the work of two pairs of hands since the fifth of Oc­to­ber, and pay­ing for it in her arms and her tem­per, be­cause a young per­son who could scour had been found sat­is­fact­ory in all of it and had not come back. She knew to a shil­ling what she had got out of that quarter of an hour. She had never asked what it had cost the other side.

“There’s noth­ing in it about the rail­ings,” said Kit, who was look­ing over her shoulder. “Lord, Clem, you’re read­ing the ser­vants’ places now. Are you think­ing of going out to ser­vice?”

“I was think­ing,” said Clem­ency, “that I owed some­body a quarter of an hour.”

She turned the page, and said no more; and her mother, who had said noth­ing all morn­ing, looked at her across the smoke of Lucy’s hat, and then at the bon­net, and then at her again, and went on with her tea.

*  *  *  *  *

It was half past three on the Monday when she came along the north side of the Square, and the light was be­gin­ning to go.

She had walked it from Fleet Street, by the way she had chosen from Dun­ning’s map in Oc­to­ber and had not needed to choose again; past Acker­mann’s, where she did not stop, be­cause she had a cake of car­mine at home and noth­ing yet to use it on; past the cir­cu­lat­ing lib­rary, and up the long clean pave­ment of the street where the shops gave out, into the quiet. The Square was as quiet as she re­membered it, ex­cept that it had ac­quired, since the first of the month, a small and steady traffic of people who were not going any­where. A barouche went slowly round the garden with two ladies in it, one of whom had a glass to her eye, and both of whom were look­ing, as the barouche passed each house, not at the house but at its rail­ings.

She stood where she had stood be­fore, with her hand on the iron, and looked down into the area.

The kit­chen win­dow was shut. There was a light be­hind it, and a smell com­ing up out of the area of some­thing being done to an onion; and she was con­sid­er­ing the el­even steps, and the door at the foot of them, and the exact form of words in which a young woman ex­plains to a cook that she will not be com­ing back, when a gen­tle­man came along the pave­ment be­hind her and stopped.

“If you have come to meas­ure them, madam,” he said, “they are along the area. Two cler­gy­men settled it on Tues­day with a tape.”

He was a tall man, and lean, in a dark coat that had been made by some­body who did not need to ad­vert­ise; and he said it in a dry Scotch voice, with­out much ex­pres­sion, as a man gives the time to a stranger who has asked for it. She had seen a coat like that be­fore, and could not think where.

“I have not come to meas­ure them,” said Clem­ency. “I have come about the place.”

There was a pause. He looked at her, and then down into the area, and then at her again, with a kind of slow, exact at­ten­tion, as a man looks at weather that nobody has told him was com­ing.

“You are the young per­son who did not come back.”

“I am the young per­son who has come back to say so.”

“Mrs. Pratt thought you very suit­able.”

“Mrs. Pratt asked whether I could scour,” said Clem­ency. “I can. I did not think it the whole of the ques­tion.”

“What was the rest of it?”

“Four­teen guineas, and the tea and sugar, and a strip of sky with rail­ings across it.”

He was si­lent for a mo­ment; and when he spoke again it was in a dif­fer­ent voice, as though she had said some­thing in a lan­guage that he had not ex­pec­ted to hear spoken on his own pave­ment.

“You have been read­ing the Mor­timers.”

“Every­body has been read­ing the Mor­timers. Your neigh­bour has seen to that.” She looked at the barouche, which had reached the far corner and was com­ing round again. “Mr. Wray says that they are flower-paint­ing.”

“Mr. Wray has never looked at a rail­ing in his life.”

“Nor has any­body in this Square, I should think.”

“One of us has,” said the gen­tle­man. “Lately.”

She looked at him prop­erly then, as she had not quite done be­fore; and she priced him, be­cause she could not help it, from the boots up­ward. The boots were very good and had been walked in, which in that Square was un­usual. The coat she had done. The face was a long, plain, guarded face, with noth­ing in it that it had not de­cided to let out; and it had de­cided, she thought, to let out very little, and was not suc­ceed­ing.

“And where did you find them?”

“Where the Mor­timers put them. In the sev­enth num­ber.”

“Not in the fourth.”

“Not in the fourth.” He seemed to find this a point of some im­port­ance.

“In the fourth they were at the kerb. The Author men­ded them.”

“Per­haps the Author was told.”

“By Mr. Wray?”

“By some­body who knew,” said Clem­ency. “Mr. Wray only re­peated it.”

She had meant noth­ing by it but the truth, which was that a young man who had never looked at a rail­ing could not have known where they went with­out being told by some­body who had; and she was sur­prised to see it go home. He did not move. But some­thing in the long face shut, as a door shuts in a house where one did not know any­body was listen­ing. He had told Lu­cius Wray where the rail­ings went, over the port, in August, with­out look­ing to see who was listen­ing; and he had not thought of it again until this mo­ment, on his own pave­ment, from a stranger.

“You are very well in­formed about Mr. Wray.”

“I read the Albe­marle.”

“Most people who read the Albe­marle read it for Mr. Wray.”

“I read it for the Warden,” said Clem­ency.

He looked down, at that, into his own area, as though there might be some­thing there that needed his at­ten­tion; and the barouche came round the corner again, and the lady with the glass put it up, and looked at the rail­ings, and then, with more in­terest, at the two of them.

“I have met the Author of the Mor­timers,” he said.

She went quite still.

“Have you?”

“On Fri­day. My neigh­bour was show­ing him the rail­ings. He is a plain man from Man­chester, and he says so.”

“And is he the Author?”

“No.”

“You are very cer­tain.”

“I asked him what the kit­chen-maid sees from under the coal-plate,” said the gen­tle­man, “and he told me car­riages. He has never in his life stood below any­thing ex­cept a lord. Who­ever wrote the kit­chen-maid has stood where you are stand­ing, and lower.”

She had heard very nearly that said be­fore, over the salt in Salis­bury Square, more crossly. She did not say so. She said, with her hand on the rail­ings, which were cold now, and the onion com­ing up out of the area like a re­proach:

“Half Lon­don has stood where I am stand­ing this month, sir. There is a lady in that barouche with a glass.”

“There were two cler­gy­men on Tues­day with a tape.”

“Which side were they on?”

“I did not ask them,” he said. “They looked like men who had laid money on it.”

She laughed. She had not meant to, and it was not the laugh she used in

shops; and he looked, for an in­stant, as sur­prised as if a win­dow had gone up in a house he had al­ways sup­posed to be empty, and then as if he would very much like it to go up again.

“They tell me,” said Clem­ency, re­cov­er­ing, “that the Albe­marle has the bet­ter book.”

“The Albe­marle has a cold book.”

“It has a cold book with one sen­tence a month in it that is worth the whole of the Mor­timers.”

She said it to be con­trary, be­cause he had de­fen­ded the Mor­timers to her on her own pave­ment, so to speak, with a warmth she had not looked for in Gros­venor Square, and she did not choose to be de­fen­ded; and she found, hav­ing said it, that it was true, and that she had never said it aloud be­fore to any­body.

He did not an­swer at once. He stood with his hands be­hind him and looked at her as he had looked at her when she spoke of the sky and the rail­ings.

“You read it for one sen­tence?”

“I read everything for one sen­tence. The rest is what the gen­tle­man was paid for.”

“I am told,” said Mr. Kinross, “that the gen­tle­man is not paid at all.”

“Then he is either a fool or very rich.”

“I be­lieve he is both.”

“He must be,” said Clem­ency. “It can­not be cheap, to be read by nobody, at twenty pounds a⁠—” She stopped.

“At twenty pounds a⁠—?”

“At whatever it is. I am told it is a great deal.”

It was the only thing she had said in a quarter of an hour that she would have given money to have back; and she saw that he had heard it, and that he did not know what to make of it, and was turn­ing it over, and set­ting it down, in the end, to some­thing else. She did not know what he set it down to. She thought it might be Albe­marle Street, where, Kit said, the clerks knew everything and were paid to know noth­ing; and she was so re­lieved to see him put it away that she nearly said some­thing worse.

“Which sen­tence?” he said.

“I beg your par­don?”

“You said there was one a month. Which?”

She opened her mouth to tell him, be­cause he had asked, and be­cause she knew; and the kit­chen win­dow went up under their feet.

“Is that the young per­son?”

It was the woman in the cap, with her sleeves rolled, look­ing up out of the area at a level a little below their boots; and she looked first at Clem­ency’s, and then at her mas­ter’s, and then, by slow de­grees and with evid­ent as­ton­ish­ment, at the rest of them.

“I’d know them boots. Men­ded at the toe. You’ll be come back, then.”

“I have come to tell you to fill the place, Mrs. Pratt,” said Clem­ency. She found it a little dif­fi­cult to say it to a cook in a hole in the ground with a gen­tle­man stand­ing be­side her, and she said it to the cook, down­wards, with as much dig­nity as the angle al­lowed. “I am sorry to have kept it.”

“Kept it!” Mrs. Pratt put her fists on the sill. “I’ve had four from the of­fice since, and sent them all off. One cried. Two couldn’t scour, though they said they could, which is worse than not say­ing. And the fourth asked was there a fol­lower al­lowed, the first thing, on the bot­tom step, be­fore she’d so much as looked at a cop­per.” She looked at Clem­ency’s boots again, with some­thing like af­fec­tion. “Four­teen guineas and your tea and sugar, and I’d make it fif­teen for a cool one. I’ll speak to Mr. Fen­wick.”

Mr. Kinross, who had not until that mo­ment known that his kit­chen paid four­teen guineas, or that his cook could make it fif­teen, or that four young women had come down his area steps in a month and been sent up them again, stood on his own pave­ment and listened to the eco­nomy of his house being ex­plained to a stranger by a woman in a hole, and said noth­ing at all.

“I have a place, Mrs. Pratt,” said Clem­ency.

“Where?”

“In the City. It is not a quiet one.”

“What does it pay?” said Mr. Kinross.

She turned and looked at him. It was not a ques­tion that a gen­tle­man asked a young per­son on a pave­ment, and he ap­peared to know it, and to have asked it all the same, as a man who has been ask­ing ques­tions for a month in his own house has got out of the way of not ask­ing them.

“It pays on de­liv­ery,” said Clem­ency.

“On de­liv­ery of what?”

“Of whatever is wanted, sir,” she said, “on the day it is wanted.” And she made a curtsy, which was a thing she had not done to any­body since Bread Street, down­wards, to the area, where it was re­ceived by Mrs. Pratt with a nod; and an­other, very slight, to the gen­tle­man on the pave­ment, who re­turned it with a bow that he seemed to have taken out for the pur­pose, like a thing kept in a drawer.

“You have not told me which sen­tence,” he said.

“Another time.”

“When?”

“When you have read the Warden for it your­self.”

“I have read the Warden,” said Mr. Kinross, “a good deal.”

“Then you will know it when you come to it,” said Clem­ency; and she went away along the north side, in the

dusk, at the pace of a woman walk­ing a little ahead of weather, and did not look back, be­cause one did not; and the lady in the barouche, com­ing round the corner for the third time, put up her glass and watched her go.

Below his feet Mrs. Pratt let out a long breath.

“That’s a cool one, sir,” she said. “I’d have had her.”

“So should I,” said Mr. Kinross; and Mrs. Pratt, who had worked in that house for nine years and had never be­fore heard the mas­ter ex­press an opin­ion about any­thing below the level of the din­ing-room, looked up at him for some time with her mouth a little open, and then shut the win­dow.

*  *  *  *  *

She did not take the long way home. She took the shortest, which was still long, and she went along it fast, as though the Square might send after her; and it was not until she was past Char­ing Cross, and in the noise again, and could hear her­self think, that she slowed down and began to do what she al­ways did with a thing that had happened to her, which was to count it.

She had told a stranger that the Warden was worth the whole of the Mor­timers. That was the first thing. She had said it to be con­trary, and it had been true, and she had said it on a pave­ment in Gros­venor Square to a man who had just fin­ished de­fend­ing the Mor­timers to her with more warmth than she had ever heard any­body spend on them, Kit in­cluded; and she did not know which of these she minded more, and sus­pec­ted that she minded neither, which was worse.

He had de­fen­ded them. He had said that who­ever wrote the kit­chen-maid had stood under a coal-plate and looked up, and he had said it as a gardener says there will be frost to­night; and he had caught Mr. Hind­ley out on a bar­row, and dis­posed of him in a sen­tence. Nobody had no­ticed the bar­row. Kit had not, nor Mr. Bal­dock, nor Mr. Gedge, who read everything he set; and a Scotch gen­tle­man in Gros­venor Square had no­ticed it, and known what it meant. She had wanted to laugh, and had wanted, at the same time, very much, to say Yes; and she had said in­stead that half Lon­don had stood there that month, which was true, and was the first time that day she had told the truth in order not to tell it.

The twenty pounds was worse. That had not been said to hide any­thing; it was the truth, said to the wrong per­son, by ac­ci­dent. She had worked it out in Oc­to­ber over the fish, from the price of the Albe­marle and the size of its sale and the length of the Warden, as she would have worked out what a house in Blooms­bury cost to keep, and she had never said it aloud to a soul; and she had said it, or three-quar­ters of

it, to a Scotch gen­tle­man in Gros­venor Square who read the Albe­marle and knew where Mr. Wray had his rail­ings from. He had heard it. He had put it away. She did not know where.

And she had not told him which sen­tence. She went over that, going up Lud­gate Hill in the lamps, and was hon­est with her­self about it, as she was about money. She had not told him be­cause Mrs. Pratt had put up the win­dow; but she would not have told him if Mrs. Pratt had not. For the sen­tence she would have named was the one about a man who had no no­tion what any­thing cost: the best thing in the Warden, and the best thing in the Mor­timers, be­cause she had read it in the one in August and put it into the other the same week; and she could not say that sen­tence aloud to any­body who had read both with­out say­ing, in the same breath, where she had last put it.

So it had to be an­other time. She had said so, and he had asked when, and she had told him, which was im­per­tin­ent, and which she did not re­gret. When you have read the Warden for it your­self. He had said that he had read it a good deal. She did not doubt it. He had the look of a man who read a thing until there was noth­ing left in it, and then read it again to make sure.

She climbed the two pair of stairs over Dun­ning’s, and Kit was home be­fore her, with news.

He had it in the front room, stand­ing, with his coat still on, which was how Kit al­ways had news; for he held that a thing told sit­ting down lost a third of its value, and he did not like to give any­thing away.

“Two Authors,” he said, “at one table. On the fif­teenth of Decem­ber. Lord Ash­combe is to have Dal­gleish and Hind­ley to din­ner to­gether, the Warden and the Mor­timers, and ask them each what the other means by it. Til­lot­son told his sis­ter, and his sis­ter told Pel­ham at a rout in Bed­ford Square, and Pel­ham says he would give a quarter’s fees to be under the table.”

“A Hind­ley at a lord’s table,” said Mrs. Lyd­iard. “His father dined with the Borough­reeve of Man­chester in the year five, and sent your father the bill for the coach.”

“What will they have?” said Lucy, who was still wear­ing the bon­net, in­doors, be­cause it had not yet oc­curred to her to take it off.

“Turtle, Pel­ham says. And who do you sup­pose makes up the table?” Kit did not wait to be sup­posed at. “A Scotch neigh­bour of his lord­ship’s on the north side. A Temple man: a Mr. Kinross, who has cham­bers in King’s Bench Walk and sits in the garden of an af­ter­noon mark­ing his books with a pen­cil, and has never been known to say three words to­gether. Pel­ham says

Ash­combe asks him to everything be­cause he is the only man in Lon­don who will hear his lord­ship on Frois­sart with­out in­ter­rupt­ing.”

Clem­ency, who was tak­ing off her gloves, stopped tak­ing them off.

She knew where she had seen the coat. It had been on a bench in the Temple garden, in August, with a pen­cil going in the mar­gin of some­thing fol­ded back so that she could not see what it was; and it had not looked up, and she had de­cided, passing be­hind it, that it was a thing she did not want. It had looked up this af­ter­noon. It had talked to her for a quarter of an hour on its own pave­ment, about rail­ings and coal-plates and the price of a cold book, and it had never in its life, it ap­peared, been known to say three words to­gether.

“And Rad­cliffe’s leav­ing the Albe­marle,” said Kit. “Going to Bald­win’s at Christ­mas. Pel­ham says he’ll take the Warden with him, and the Mor­timers too if he can get them, and then we shall have the pair of them in one maga­zine in Janu­ary, under one cover, like two cats in a bag.”

The Warden would not go to Bald­win’s. Clem­ency knew that as she knew the price of coals; it could not go any­where, be­cause it be­longed to the man who paid for it. But she did not say so. She sat down, and fin­ished tak­ing off her gloves; and Lucy was look­ing at her boots.

“You’ve been some­where clean,” said Lucy.

“I have been walk­ing.”

“Not in the City. Your boots are only dusty.” Lucy, who had fallen down an area at nine and had looked at pave­ments with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion ever since, said it with­out the least idea that it was re­mark­able. “Nobody’s boots are only dusty in the City.”

Her mother looked up from the cuff she was mend­ing.

“I went to look at the rail­ings,” said Clem­ency, “like every­body else.”

It was true, and it was the second time that day she had told the truth in order not to tell it; and Kit, who had not been to see the rail­ings and had meant to, was so much de­lighted that he for­got to be jeal­ous.

“Clem’s been to Gros­venor Square! Well? Where are they?”

“Along the area,” said Clem­ency. “Two cler­gy­men meas­ured them on Tues­day, with a tape.”

“Pel­ham said so,” said Kit, with deep sat­is­fac­tion. He had wanted since he was twelve to be the one in the fam­ily who knew things first, and he had lately begun to sus­pect, with­out being able to say why, that he was not; and the cler­gy­men con­soled him. Mrs. Lyd­iard went back to the cuff, and said noth­ing, as she had said noth­ing about the bon­net, and about the car­mine, and

about a great many things that au­tumn; and they went to bed at el­even.

Then Clem­ency sat down in the back room to the ninth num­ber, which was due on the tenth of Decem­ber and had been begun on the Fri­day and was going well; and she wrote for an hour, by the candle, with­out stop­ping. It was not until she read it over, at midnight, that she found that Mr. Mor­timer, stand­ing in the fourth chapter on the pave­ment out­side his own house in Mount Street while his wife went in, had looked down, for the first time in nine num­bers, into his own area, and said to nobody in par­tic­u­lar, in a voice that was not quite his own:

“One of us has. Lately.”

She looked at it for a long time. Then she let it stand, be­cause it was right, and be­cause it was the best line in the num­ber, and be­cause the only per­son in Lon­don who would know where it came from did not know who she was.

*  *  *  *  *

Mr. Kinross went down to his own kit­chen that even­ing, which he had done once in el­even years, when the chim­ney caught.

He went down the back stairs that the foot­men used, past the bells, and found them nar­rower than he had sup­posed and the light worse; and he came out at the foot of them into a stone pas­sage that smelt of onions and soap, and into a kit­chen where a fire was kept for the whole of a house, and where his cook, his two foot­men, a scull­ery-maid he had not known he pos­sessed, and a cat, were sit­ting at their sup­per, and rose, all but the cat, as though the ceil­ing had come in.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Kinross. “Mrs. Pratt, I should like a word with you.”

He had it in the house­keeper’s room, which was small, and very clean, and had a slate hanging by the door with the next day’s din­ner chalked on it. Mrs. Pratt stood. He did not ask her to sit, be­cause he did not know whether one did; and then he did ask her, be­cause he found that he could not con­duct a con­ver­sa­tion with a woman stand­ing in her own room, and she sat on the very edge of a chair and waited to be told what she had done.

“The young per­son,” said Mr. Kinross. “The first time. In Oc­to­ber. What did she ask you?”

Mrs. Pratt con­sidered him. She had been nine years in that house, and the mas­ter had come down to the kit­chen once in all that time, when the chim­ney caught; and she ap­peared to be weigh­ing whether this was a chim­ney.

“The wages, sir,” she said. “Four­teen guineas. And was it tea and sugar, or tea and sugar found; and could she bear it quiet. She asked that back, which they don’t. Mostly they say they can bear any­thing, and then they cry.”

“What else?”

“Noth­ing else, sir. She answered. I asked, and she answered, and very cool. Read a little, she said, and write enough to sign for her wages.” Mrs. Pratt’s face took on, slowly, the ex­pres­sion of a woman who has been wait­ing six weeks to say a thing to some­body. “She was lying, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“She read my slate.” Mrs. Pratt nod­ded at it, by the door. “Upside down, from where she stood, while I was ask­ing about her fires. I had a fri­cas­see on it, for the Tues­day. She read it across the table, up­side down, and she said, very civil, as though it was noth­ing, that there was two esses in fri­cas­see.” She paused. “There is, too. I looked.”

Mr. Kinross looked at the slate, on which there was to­mor­row a saddle of mut­ton, spelt cor­rectly.

“And then?”

“And then she went and stood in the area, sir, at the foot of the steps, when I’d done with her, and looked up. A long time. At the plate where the coals go down, and the rail­ings, and the boots going over. As if she’d never seen it from under be­fore.” Mrs. Pratt shook her head. “They don’t, mostly, from the of­fice. They’ve been under it all their lives. They don’t look.”

Mr. Kinross thanked her. He went back up the nar­row stairs, past the bells, and the foot­men, who were stand­ing in the pas­sage to see him go as men stand to see a comet, stood back against the wall to let him by; and he went into the lib­rary and shut the door.

The slip was in his drawer at the Temple. He did not need it. He knew what was on it: a house­keeper’s son, un­der­lined twice, and Oxford, with a query, and under that the third line, which he had writ­ten in Oc­to­ber be­cause he was hon­est in a mar­gin, and had struck out be­cause a woman could not have kept it up for six months, at seven guineas, which was all the Lud­gate paid then, to the tenth of every month.

He went to the Temple in the morn­ing, and sat all day with the slip in the drawer; and at four Fig­gis put his head in, as he now did, to say that they had given that fel­low Carlile three years in Dorchester and fif­teen hun­dred pounds, and would he credit it. Mr. Kinross said that he would. When Fig­gis had gone he took out the slip.

He looked at the third line for some time. Then he took up his pen and wrote it again, un­der­neath, with­out the stroke through it: pos­sibly a woman. And then, be­cause he was an hon­est man and could not bear it, he wrote under that, very small, or his sis­ter.

(To be con­tin­ued.)