Mr. Galloway brought his words to a standstill, apparently too absorbed in the railway guide to conclude them. Roland Yorke, who had a free tongue, even with his master, filled up the pause. “Were you going out, sir?” “Is that any business of yours, Mr. Roland? Talking won’t fill in that lease, sir.” “The lease is not in a hurry, sir,” returned incorrigible Roland. But he held his tongue then, and bent his head over his work. Mr. Galloway dipped his pen in the ink, and copied something from “Bradshaw” into the closely-written letter, standing at Jenkins’s desk to do it; then he passed the blotting-paper quickly over the words, and folded the letter. “Channing,” he said, speaking very hastily, “you will see a twenty-pound bank-note on my desk, and the directed envelope of this letter; bring them here.” Arthur went, and brought forth the envelope and bank-note. Mr. Galloway doubled the note in four and slipped it between the folds of the letter, putting both into the envelope. He had fastened it down, when a loud noise and commotion was heard in the street. Curious as are said to be antiquated maidens, Mr. Galloway rushed to the window and threw it up, his two clerks attending in his wake. Something very fine, in a white dress, and pink and scarlet flowers on her bonnetless head, as if attired for an evening party, was whirling round the middle of the road in circles: a tall woman, who must once have been beautiful. She appeared to be whirling someone else with her, amid laughter and shrieks, and cries and groans, from the gathering mob. “It is Mad Nance!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “Poor thing! she really ought to be in confinement.” So every one had said for a long time, but no one bestirred themselves to place her in it. This unfortunate creature, Mad Nance, as she was called, was sufficiently harmless to be at large on sufferance, and sufficiently mad at times to put a street in an uproar. In her least sane moments she would appear, as now, in an old dimity white dress, scrupulously washed and ironed, and decorated with innumerable frills; some natural flowers, generally wild ones, in her hair. Dandelions were her favourites; she would make them into a wreath, and fasten it on, letting her entangled hair hang beneath. To-day she had contrived to pick up some geranium blossoms, scarlet and pink. “Who has she got hold of there?” exclaimed Mr. Galloway. “He does not seem to like it.”