I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William’s incomprehensible behaviour. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen’s houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a light showed. So far as I could see, some one pulled up the blind and for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked, for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home. Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love-affair of William’s? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the club till three. I was miserable next day, and blamed the deviled kidneys for it. Whether William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had two plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his club: the one that, as he had made me lose a bet, I must punish him; the other that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes. Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that--Well, I seemed to see his dying wife in it. I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club. Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced to see the girl Jenny coming, and--No; let me tell the truth, though the whole club reads: I was waiting for her. “How is William’s wife to-day?” I asked. “She told me to nod three times,” the little slattern replied; “but she looked like nothink but a dead one till she got the brandy. “Hush, child!” I said, shocked. “You don’t know how the dead look.” “Bless yer,” she answered, “don’t I just! Why, I’ve helped to lay ‘em out. I’m going on seven.” “Is William good to his wife?” “Course he is. Ain’t she his missis?” “Why should that make him good to her?” I asked, cynically, out of my knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never had any opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers, fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and, looking up wonderingly, said: “Ain’t you green--just!” “When does William reach home at night?” “‘Tain’t night; it’s morning. When I wakes up at half dark and half light, and hears a door shutting, I know as it’s either father going off to his work or Mr. Hicking come home from his.” “Who is Mr. Hicking?” “Him as we’ve been speaking on--William. We calls him mister, ‘cause he’s a toff. Father’s just doing jobs in Covent Gardens, but Mr. Hicking, he’s a waiter, and a clean shirt every day. The old woman would like father to be a waiter, but he hain’t got the ‘ristocratic look.” “What old woman?”