His two daughters beat him home from church--and pretty girls they were
in their Sunday dresses; withal it was the certain weak and delicate
prettiness which characterises the Cockney lasses, a prettiness which is
no more than a promise with no grip on time, and doomed to fade quickly
away like the colour from a sunset sky.
They looked me over with frank curiosity, as though I were some sort of a
strange animal, and then ignored me utterly for the rest of my wait. Then
Johnny Upright himself arrived, and I was summoned upstairs to confer
with him.
"Speak loud," he interrupted my opening words. "I've got a bad cold, and
I can't hear well."
Shades of Old Sleuth and Sherlock Holmes! I wondered as to where the
assistant was located whose duty it was to take down whatever information
I might loudly vouchsafe. And to this day, much as I have seen of Johnny
Upright and much as I have puzzled over the incident, I have never been
quite able to make up my mind as to whether or not he had a cold, or had
an assistant planted in the other room. But of one thing I am sure:
though I gave Johnny Upright the facts concerning myself and project, he
withheld judgment till next day, when I dodged into his street
conventionally garbed and in a hansom.
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