I fancy she was so taken aback by my manner that for the moment she was speechless. Anyhow, she went, and regained the use of her tongue when she got outside. I heard her rating Saunders soundly as she went downstairs. A young man came next, with something about him which smacked of a provincial town. "My name's Parkins. You've got a pretty crowd downstairs. I didn't expect this sort of thing, or I wouldn't have come. A lot of Johnnies seem to be on the prowl for a purse. Was the one you found plain leather, with a single pocket, and three fivers inside?" "Not the least like it." "Oh! The fact is, I'm up in town for an holiday, and the night before last I went on the razzle, and some Johnny boned my purse, and I thought you might have got it." I do not know what he meant, or if he intended to insult me--he seemed to be a simple sort of youth--but he was gone before I had a chance of asking him. He was followed by an elderly gentleman, whom I had reason to suppose, before I had got rid of him, was either a seasoned liar, or more or less insane. He seated himself--uninvited by me--crossed his legs, and nursed his silk hat and umbrella. "I suppose it is a purse you've found?" "Of course it is. Have you lost one?" "It isn't a Gladstone bag?" "A Gladstone bag?" I was a little dazed by my efforts to grasp the man's meaning, and the question was such an absurd one. "I take it that if it had been a Gladstone bag I should have mentioned it in my advertisement. I am still able to distinguish between the one and the other." "Nor a silk umbrella with a silver mount and a crest on top, like this?" He held out the one he had been holding. I stiffened my back, suspecting him of a humorous intention. "My time is valuable, as, having just come from downstairs, you must be aware. May I ask if I am indebted for the pleasure of your presence here to the fact of your having lost a purse?" "_A_ purse? On my soul and honour, sir, in my time I've lost hundreds--hundreds! Positively hundreds!" I believe I gasped--he spoke with an airy indifference as if that kind of thing were commonplace. "As I was saying to some of those fellows downstairs, if there's a man in England who has lost more things than I have, I should like to meet him. It's a genius I have; as sure as I get a thing I lose it. And the more it costs, the more it's lost. As for purses, they're my strongest point. I suppose I lost more than a score last year, and already more than a dozen this. Only last week my wife bought a steel chain with a steel purse at the end of it. She chained it round me. If you will believe me, sir, the very next day I went to a Turkish bath and left it there--never set eyes upon it since. I take it it isn't that purse you've found?" "It is not." "Nor a large square trunk, iron-bound, weighing about two tons, which I left on the Boulogne Quay a fortnight last Thursday?"