That day, at the Molyneux Arms, Buck was alternately at his fondest and at his most tyrannical. The fondness was for Louie and the boy, the tyranny for everybody else. As Louie entered the little private parlour (she was not allowed to set foot in the rest of the premises) she heard loud crowings; they came from Jimmy, and were for the Pilgrim of Love who held him up at arm's-length in the air; but the next moment Buck was scolding a barmaid who had had the temerity to borrow the current number of _Modern Society_ before Louie had seen it. "Not that I don't make 'em all read it," he said, "but at times and seasons, and in their proper places; what with all these Radicals and what not we don't want chayoss coming again! You bring it back this minute, miss!--'Oryn--thia my Belovèd!" Buck kept his divided humour through tea; then there was another outburst. This time it was about a letter that had not been given to Louie immediately. "And how do _you_ know that it isn't important?" he broke out on his wife. "Not a word--not a word! I _know_ it is important--all letters addressed so are important, mind, for the future! Those letters aren't about the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, I'll have you know! Give it to her at once, and let Madermoselle hook up the back, or your next dress shall fasten down the front, I promise you!... What, little man! A granddad, eh? 'No re-(_h_)-est--but the gra-(_h_)-ave----'" For all Louie was able to guess from the signature, her letter might have been from butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, all three; the name--"hers to serve, Frank Hickley"--was unknown to her. But the single other name that the letter contained was known. It was that of Kitty Windus. She was laid up somewhere in Vauxhall, and wanted to see her. The next morning, in a shabby respectable street off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, Louie rang a bell beneath which, punched in a strip of aluminium, was the sign, "F. Hickley, Agent." F. Hickley himself opened the door. Later Louie learned that he was an agent for his wife's shopping, boot-cleaning and potato-peeling. Mrs. Hickley was Kitty's cousin, but the bit she had coming in was not enough to relieve her of the necessity of keeping a lodging-house. That it was a lodging-house Louie guessed from the number and variety of hats and coats that hung in the narrow yellow-painted hall. Mrs. Hickley appeared from somewhere below; Mr. Hickley, descending again, passed her on the stairs. "Are you Miss Causton?" Mrs. Hickley asked. "Yes. I've had a letter saying Miss Windus was here." "Will you come up? Don't take too much notice of her, what she says, especially about tracts; Uncle Arthur's side's liable to it. This way." "Is she ill?" Louie asked. "Not to call ill. She'll go to Margate in a week or two, for the air, though Margate's too strong for me; Littlehampton's my favourite. And Bognor. Mind the stair-rod--I must tell Frank to fasten it down."