Breezy didn’t altogether like being called an accident. He took a good deal of credit for the fact that Lola was Mayfair, as Emily called it, rather well. And he said so, and added, “How about the old de Brézé blood? You forget that, my being a little jeweler in a small shop. She’s thrown back, that’s what she’s done, and I’ll tell you what it is, missus. She won’t be ashamed of us, whoever she marries. _She_ doesn’t look upon us as accidents, whatever you may do, and if some man who’s A 1 at Lloyd’s falls in love with her and makes her his wife, her old father and mother will be drawn up the ladder after her, if I know anything about Lola. But it’s a dream, just a dream,” hoping that it wasn’t, and only saying so as a sort of insurance against bad luck. It was a new idea and an exciting one, which put that place on the Thames into the discard. Personally he had hitherto regarded the Simpkins proposal in a very favorable light. That little man had more money than he himself could ever make, and, after all, a highly respectable public house on the upper Thames, patronized by really nice people, had been, in his estimation, something not to be sneezed at, by any means. “Well,” said Mrs. Breezy, “you may call it a dream. I don’t. Lola thinks things out. She’s always thought things out. She became a lady’s maid for a purpose. When she’s finished with that, she’ll move on to something else. I don’t know what, because she keeps things to herself. But she knows more than you and I will ever know. I’ve noticed that often. And when she was here on Sunday, and we walked about the streets, she was no more Lola Breezy than Lady Feo is, and there was something in the way she laid the dinner and insisted on waiting on us which showed me that she knew she wasn’t. She was what country people call ‘fey’ that night. Her body was with us, but her brain and heart and spirit were far out of our reach. I’m certain of that, John, and I’m certain of something else, too. She’s in love, and she knows her man, and he’s a big man, and very soon she’ll have a surprise for us, and it will _be_ a surprise. You mark my words.” [Illustration: A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.] And when she got up to answer the tinkle of the bell on the shop door, she left the fat John Breezy quivering with excitement and a sort of awe. Emily was not much of a talker, but when she started she said more in two minutes than other women say in a week. And after he had told himself how good it would be for his little girl to win great happiness, he put both his pale hands on the table, and heaved a tremendous sigh. “Oh, my God,” he said. “And if she could help us to get out of this shop, never to see a watch again, to be no longer the slave of that damned little bell, to go away and live in the country, and grow things, and listen to the birds, and watch the sunsets.” VII