Mrs. Gapp collected herself, which--if we include in it her burden, consisting of some bundles of firewood and one pound four ounces of beefsteak wrapped in a serial--seemed in some danger of redistributing itself when collected. She then spoke, with a mien as indignant as if she were Boadicea seeking counsel of her country's gods, and said, "_Me_ r-r-runk! _Shober!_"--the last word expressing heartfelt conviction. Some remarks that followed, scarcely articulate enough to warrant transcribing, were interpreted by Mr. Aiken to the effect that he was doing a cruel injustice to a widow-woman who had had fourteen, and had lived a pure and blameless life, and had buried three husbands. Much stress was laid on her own habitual abstention from stimulants, and the example she had striven to set in her own humble circle. Her third had never touched anything but water--a curlew's life, as it were--owing to the force of this example. Let persons who accused her of drunkenness look at home, and first be sure of their own sobriety. Her conscience acquitted her. For her part she thought intoxication a beastly, degrading habit--that is to say, if Mr. Aiken interpreted rightly something that sounded, phonetically, like "Bishley grey rabbit." At this point one of the wood-bundles became undone, owing to the disgraceful quality of the string now in use. Mrs. Gapp was dissuaded with difficulty from returning to the shop to exchange it, but in the end descended the kitchen-stairs, lamenting commercial dishonesty, and shedding sticks. The Artist seemed to regard this as normal charing, nothing uncommon. He returned to the Austrian bent-wood chair, and sat down to think whether he should light the gas. He began to suspect himself of going imbecile with disheartenment and depression. He was at his lowest ebb. "I tell you what," said he--it was Space he was addressing--"I shall just go straight away to-morrow after breakfast to Coombe, and tell Mrs. Hay that if she doesn't come back I shall let the Studio and go to Japan." But Space didn't seem interested. It had three dimensions, and was content. He might as well light the gas as not; so he did it, and it sang, and burned blue. Then it stopped singing, and became _transigeant_, and you could turn it down or up. Mr. Aiken turned it down, but not too much, and listened to a cab coming down the street. "That's not for here," said he. He had no earthly reason for saying this. He was only making conversation; or rather, soliloquy. But he was wrong; at least so far as that the cab was really stopping, here or next door. And in the quadrupedations, door-slammings, backings, reproofs to the horse, interchange of ideas between the Captain and the passengers of a hansom cab of spirit, a sound reached Mr. Aiken's ear which arrested him as he stood, with his finger on the gas-tap. "Hullo!" said he, and listened as a musical Critic listens to a new performance.