“I bin three days findin” ’er. My old lan’lady’s dead, an’ I ’ad to try an’ find ’er sister. Nobody knew where the sister was, but after a lot o’ bother a old woman sends me to a cousin—in the workus. Cousin in the workus thinks the sister’s dead too, but tells me to go an’ ask at a newspaper-shop in Bromley. Newspaper-shop’s shut up—people gone. Find the man as moved ’em, an’ ’e sends me to Bow—another newspaper-shop. People there send me right back to Poplar; party o’ the name o’ Bushell. Party o’ the name o’ Bushell very friendly, an’ sends me to Old Ford; then I went to Bow again, an’ so I dodged about, up an’ down, till I run across Mrs. Butson up on ’Omerton Marshes, keepin’ a laundry. That was to-day, that was. “Well, she took it mighty cool at first. When I told ’er I knew where ’er ’usband was, she told me I might keep my knowledge to myself, for she didn’t want ’im. Very cool she was, till I told ’er ’e’d married again, an’ at that she shut ’er jaw with a snap, an’ glared at me. So I just told ’er what I knew, an’ ’ow it ’ud be a charity to give ’im a scare on the quiet, an’ send ’im away from ’ere, an’ ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Jest you show me where they live,’ she says; ‘I’ll give ’im a scare!’ ‘Right,’ says I, but I made conditions. She wus to wait at the street-corner, an’ I was to send in a message for ’im to come out. Then we was to give ’im ten minutes to go an’ git ’is clo’es, if ’e wanted any, make any excuse ’e liked, an’ clear out; so as to do it all quiet an’ peaceable, an’ nobody the wiser. ‘All right,’ she says, ‘jest you show me the place, that’s all!’ So I brought ’er. But when we got to the corner an’ I told ’er which ’ouse, auf she went at a bolt, an’—an’ set up all that row ’fore I could stop ’er! Who’d ’a’ thought of ’er actin’ contradictory like that?” It was not altogether so dense a mystery to Johnny as it was to the simpler Hicks, twice his age, though more a boy than himself. But he assured Hicks that after all he had done a good turn, and no price was too high for riddance of Butson. “Mother’ll be grateful to you, too, when she’s a bit quieter, an’ knows about it,” he said. And presently he added thoughtfully, “I think I ought to have guessed something o’ the sort, with his sneaking in an’ out so quiet, an’ being afraid o’ the p’lice. There’s lots o’ things I see through now, that I ought to have seen through before: not wantin’ the new name over the door, for one!” . . . . . Till the shutters were up that night, and the door well bolted, Nan May was urgent that that horrible woman must be kept out. And when at last she slept, in mere exhaustion, she awoke in a fit of trembling and choking, beseeching somebody to take the woman away.