The portly police constable got down from the box of the four-wheeler with an alacrity which a detached observer might have felt to be beneath the dignity of his physical equipment, and communicated this order to those who sat within. It reassured the woman to observe that the door of the police station had opened, and that on its threshold were a police constable and a pale man with a pen behind his ear. A second crowd was beginning already to assemble. As the boy in the grasp of his two custodians was marched into the police station, the woman had the gratification of noticing that by this time a number of eye-witnesses had come round the corner from the Emporium. Their interest was reassuring. By the time the crowd on the pavement had grown almost large enough to warrant the woman’s descent from the hansom, another pale man, with a pen behind both ears, came out of the police station. The crowd made way for him respectfully. He approached the step of the hansom with the finely considered deportment of one who is accustomed to deal with men and things. “I am afraid, Lady Pomeroy,” he said firmly, but with perfect courtesy, “we shall have to trouble you to come in and prefer a charge.” “I have nothing whatever to do with the charges,” said the woman, speaking over his head to the crowd. “I ask for my purse; I can’t live without it. If it is not returned to me _immediately_ it will give great displeasure to Lord Pomeroy.” However, by this time the woman had seemed fully to decide that the hour was ripe to make a descent from the vehicle. As she did so one of those who had been privileged to take part in the scene outside the Emporium cried, “Three cheers for Lord Pomeroy!” They were given heartily. By an impulse which she was powerless to repress, the woman stopped in her triumphal progress to the door of the police station, and bowed and smiled gracefully on all sides. “Three cheers for the Countess!” was the reward she received. Amidst quite a display of enthusiasm the woman entered the police station, accompanied by the little girl with the golden curls, who was clapping her small hands with glee. She did not seem to be aware that several of the dolls she had been at the trouble to convey from the Emporium had fallen out of her pockets on to the pavement. “Wot’s up, Bill?” said a male street-person, with a filthy scarf round his neck, to one whose neck was encased less adequately in only the band of his shirt. “Bin pinching one o’ the unemployed,” said his companion, with an admirable assumption of the air of a Christian martyr. VI Within the precincts of the police station the boy, still bewildered yet not afraid, was brought to stand in a gloomy room with iron bars across the windows. In this a bald-headed man sat at a desk writing. “Pearson,” said the bald-headed man to a police constable who wore no helmet, “fetch one o’ them velvet cheers out o’ the horfis for her ladyship.”