As far as Teddy could make out from their conversation, ’Enrietta had once been Mrs. Hughes. On a trip to Southend she had insisted on taking a swing in a highflyer. To her great annoyance her husband had been too timid to accompany her, and she had had to take it by herself. The last he had seen of her was a flushed face and flapping skirt swooping in daring semi-circles between the heavens and the ground. When the swing had stopped and he pressed through the crowd to claim her, she had vanished. Perhaps it was the blood on the thin man’s leg that prompted the fat man’s observation. “It might ’ave been that.” “What?” The fat man drew his finger across his throat suggestively. “That.” He repeated. “It might ’ave ’appened to your ’Enrietta.” “Often thought it myself.” Mr. Hughes spoke slowly. “But--but d’you think anybody would suspect that I----?” “They might.” The fat man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s usually chaps of your build that does it; as the lofty Mr. Shakespeare puts it, ’I ’ate those lean and ’ungry men.’” “Very true! Very true! Lefroy was lean and ’ungry. I know, ’cause I once rode with ’im in the same railway carriage.” Teddy listened, fascinated and horror-stricken, to the fat and thin man swapping anecdotes of murders past and present. For half an hour they strove to outdo each other in ghastliness and minuteness of details. When they had returned to their work and Mr. Hughes was at a safe distance, the fat man spoke beneath his breath to the little boy: “He’s no good at anything. I keep him with me ’cause we both makes a ’obby of ’omicide--that’s the doctor’s word for the kind o’ illness we was talking about. Also,” here his voice became as refined as Teddy’s father’s, “he amuses me with his Cockney dialect He says he’s unlucky because he was born in a hansom-cab. Whenever I speak to him I call him Ooze and drop my aitches. It’s another of my hobbies--that and keeping pigeons. Pretending to be vulgar relieves my feelings. When one’s married and as stout as I am, if one doesn’t relieve one’s feelings one bursts.” For the same reason that one lavishes endearments on a dog of uncertain temper, Teddy thought it wise to feign an interest in the fat man’s hobbies. “It can’t be very nice for them,” he faltered. “For ’oo?” “The persons.” “What persons?” “The persons you do it to.” “Do it to! Do it to! You’re making me lose my temper, which is bad for me ’ealth; that’s what you’re doing. Now, then, do what? Don’t beat about. Out with it.” For answer the little boy drew a tremulous finger across his throat in imitation of one of the fat man’s gestures. The fat man started laughing--laughing uproariously. His body shook like a jelly and fell into dimples. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. At last he shouted: “Mr. Ooze, come ’ere. This little boy--” Then he stopped laughing suddenly and dropped his rough way of talking. The child’s face had gone desperately white. “Poor chap! Must have frightened you! Here, steady.”