One of the two saucy girls, happening to pass an instant before the booth above us extinguished its lights, spied us in dejected colloquy, and came forward. Hartnoll turned from her, but I made bold to ask her the nearest way to the Blue Posts. I will give you her exact answer. She said--"Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Blue Postesses." I have it by heart, because years after I found it in Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_, where you may find it for yourselves, if you look, with the answer I might have made to her. She did not wait for one, however, but stood looking around in the fog as if for a guide. "Poor lads!" she went on, "you'll certainly never reach it without help, though everyone in Portsmouth knows the Blue Posts: and I'd go with you myself if I weren't due at the theatre in ten minutes' time. I have to call on the manager as soon as the house empties to-night; and if I miss it will mean losing an engagement." She puckered her brow thoughtfully, and her face in spite of the paint on it struck me as a lovely one, saucy no longer but almost angelically kind. I have never seen her again from that day to this, and I was a boy of fourteen, but I'll wager that girl had a good heart. "Your best plan," she decided, "is to step along with me, and at the stage door, or inside the theatre at any rate, we'll soon find somebody to put you in the way." But here a small figure stepped out against us from the shadow of the platform, and a small shrillish voice piped up-- "For a copper, miss--or a copper apiece if they'll trust me. Find the Blue Postesses? W'y, I'd walk there on my head with my eyes bound!" We stared down at her--for it was a small girl, a girl so diminutive that Hartnoll and I, who were not Anaks by any means, topped her by head and shoulders. She wore no shoes, no stockings, no covering for her head. Her hair, wet with the fog, draggled down, half-hiding her face, which was old for its age (as they say), and chiefly by reason of her sharp, gipsy-coloured eyes. "For a copper apiece, miss, and honour bright!" said the waif. The young actress turned to us with a laugh. "Why not?" she asked. "That is, if you're not above being beholden to the child? But I warn you not to pay her till you get to the Blue Posts." I answered that any port was good in a storm, and the child should have sixpence if she proved as good as her word.