“These people are concerned with the charges,” said the woman, including all present by a comprehensive wave of the hand. “The charges are _entirely_ their affair. They must pay all costs. I hold them _entirely_ responsible for the loss of my purse.” “Well, your ladyship----” “Please don’t be stupid, constable,” said the woman. “One feels it is trying you highly. But if these people prove unreasonable you had better communicate with Lord Pomeroy at 220, Carlton House Terrace.” The throng seemed to grow greater about the boy. The voices of the street-persons seemed to increase in volume and earnestness. By this he was divested of every tremor of fear. All his emotions were merged in wonder and bewilderment, and an overpowering desire to know what would happen next. An obese and bald-headed man, with superb side-whiskers, who wore a white waistcoat and very bright boots, came forward. His air was a singular admixture of authority and deference. The woman who had lost her purse was now rating the fatter of the two police constables at the top of her voice. The man in the white waistcoat appeared to develop a cough as he stood listening. Once or twice he glanced round at the onlookers, yet affected that he had not done so. In the meantime the only person on the huge premises who did not seem to be ministering to this spectacle was the little girl with the golden curls. She had strayed away behind one of the counters farther up the room, and was engaged in ransacking several boxes of dolls. Those which particularly appealed to her fancy she stuffed in the pockets of her coat. After a good deal of argument between the woman who had lost her purse and the more amply nourished of the two police constables, in the course of which the woman said some extremely rude things in an extremely loud voice, all of which were received with much deference, especially by those to whom they were not addressed, she called to the little girl. Cramming another doll in her pocket that fairy-like creature ran to her mother just as that person, somewhat hoarse and red in the face, led the way down-stairs accompanied by the tall man and the manager, each of whom, for a quarter of an hour past, had been issuing somewhat irrelevant instructions to the woman in black and other subordinates. Behind these three Olympian figures, yet at an effective interval, came the scarcely less Olympian figures of the two official representatives of law and order, whose portliness of aspect, dignity of bearing, and magnificent self-possession were enhanced by the fact that a frail, bewildered and anæmic-looking boy was in their concentrated clutch. A somewhat incongruous but profoundly impressed assemblage brought up the rear of the procession.