“What’s to-day?—Thursday. Say Monday.” Mr. Jowett rang the bell. “Take my advice,” said the old gentleman, laying a fatherly hand on Johnny’s shoulder, “leave business to us men. You are a handsome girl. You can do better for yourself than this.”
A clerk entered, Johnny rose.
“On Monday next, then,” Johnny reminded him.
“At four o’clock,” agreed Mr. Jowett. “Good afternoon.”
Johnny went out feeling disappointed, and yet, as he told himself, he hadn’t done so badly. Anyhow, there was nothing for it but to wait till Monday. Now he would go home, change his clothes, and get some dinner. He hailed a hansom.
“Number twenty-eight—no. Stop at the Queen’s Street corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” Johnny directed the man.
“Quite right, miss,” commented the cabman pleasantly. “Corner’s best—saves all talk.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Johnny.
“No offence, miss,” answered the man. “We was all young once.”
Johnny climbed in. At the corner of Queen Street and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Johnny got out. Johnny, who had been pondering other matters, put his hand instinctively to where, speaking generally, his pocket should have been; then recollected himself.
“Let me see, did I think to bring any money out with me, or did I not?” mused Johnny, as he stood upon the kerb.
“Look in the ridicule, miss,” suggested the cabman.
Johnny looked. It was empty.
“Perhaps I put it in my pocket,” thought Johnny.
The cabman hitched his reins to the whipsocket and leant back.
“It’s somewhere about here, I know, I saw it,” Johnny told himself. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Johnny added aloud to the cabman.
“Don’t you worry about that, miss,” replied the cabman civilly; “we are used to it. A shilling a quarter of an hour is what we charge.”
“Of all the damned silly tricks!” muttered Johnny to himself.
Two small boys and a girl carrying a baby paused, interested.
“Go away,” told them the cabman. “You’ll have troubles of your own one day.”
The urchins moved a few steps further, then halted again and were joined by a slatternly woman and another boy.
“Got it!” cried Johnny, unable to suppress his delight as his hand slipped through a fold. The lady with the baby, without precisely knowing why, set up a shrill cheer. Johnny’s delight died away; it wasn’t the pocket-hole. Short of taking the skirt off and turning it inside out, it didn’t seem to Johnny that he ever would find that pocket.