That he had received no answer to his question appeared to have escaped the attention of Mr. Peter Hope. The thin, white hand moved steadily to and fro across the paper. Three more sheets were added to those upon the floor. Then Mr. Peter Hope pushed back his chair and turned his gaze for the first time upon his visitor. To Peter Hope, hack journalist, long familiar with the genus Printer's Devil, small white faces, tangled hair, dirty hands, and greasy caps were common objects in the neighbourhood of that buried rivulet, the Fleet. But this was a new species. Peter Hope sought his spectacles, found them after some trouble under a heap of newspapers, adjusted them upon his high, arched nose, leant forward, and looked long and up and down. "God bless my soul!" said Mr. Peter Hope. "What is it?" The figure rose to its full height of five foot one and came forward slowly. Over a tight-fitting garibaldi of blue silk, excessively _decollete_, it wore what once had been a boy's pepper-and-salt jacket. A worsted comforter wound round the neck still left a wide expanse of throat showing above the garibaldi. Below the jacket fell a long, black skirt, the train of which had been looped up about the waist and fastened with a cricket-belt. "Who are you? What do you want?" asked Mr. Peter Hope. For answer, the figure, passing the greasy cap into its other hand, stooped down and, seizing the front of the long skirt, began to haul it up. "Don't do that!" said Mr. Peter Hope. "I say, you know, you--" But by this time the skirt had practically disappeared, leaving to view a pair of much-patched trousers, diving into the right-hand pocket of which the dirty hand drew forth a folded paper, which, having opened and smoothed out, it laid upon the desk. Mr. Peter Hope pushed up his spectacles till they rested on his eyebrows, and read aloud--"'Steak and Kidney Pie, 4d.; Do. (large size), _6d._; Boiled Mutton--'" "That's where I've been for the last two weeks," said the figure,--"Hammond's Eating House!" The listener noted with surprise that the voice--though it told him as plainly as if he had risen and drawn aside the red rep curtains, that outside in Gough Square the yellow fog lay like the ghost of a dead sea--betrayed no Cockney accent, found no difficulty with its aitches. "You ask for Emma. She'll say a good word for me. She told me so." "But, my good--" Mr. Peter Hope, checking himself, sought again the assistance of his glasses. The glasses being unable to decide the point, their owner had to put the question bluntly: "Are you a boy or a girl?" "I dunno." "You don't know!" "What's the difference?" Mr. Peter Hope stood up, and taking the strange figure by the shoulders, turned it round slowly twice, apparently under the impression that the process might afford to him some clue. But it did not. "What is your name?" "Tommy." "Tommy what?" "Anything you like. I dunno. I've had so many of 'em."