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on the wall; past the printed bill, which she looks at going by; out of view.

“She’s a lovely woman, too, she really is,” says Mr. Bucket, coming back to Mercury. “Don’t look quite healthy though.”

Is not quite healthy. Mercury informs him. Suffers much from headaches.

Really? That’s a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that. Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two hours, when she has them bad. By night, too.

“Are you sure you’re quite so much as six foot three?” asks Mr. Bucket, “begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?”

Not a doubt about it.

“You’re so well put together that I shouldn’t have thought it. But the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so straggling.—Walks by night, does she? When it’s moonlight, though?”

O yes. When it’s moonlight! Of course. O, of course! Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.

“I suppose you ain’t in the habit of walking, yourself?” says Mr. Bucket. “Not much time for it I should say^”

Besides which. Mercury don’t like it. Prefers carriage exercise.

“To be sure,” says Mr. Bucket. “That makes a difference. Now I think of it,” says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands, and looking pleasantly at the blaze, “she went out walking, the very night of this business.”

“To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.”

“And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it.”

“I didn’t see you,” says Mercury.

“I was rather in a hurry,” returns Mr. Bucket, “for I was going to visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea—next door but two to the old original Bun House—ninety year old the old lady is, a single woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the time. Let’s see. What time might it be? It wasn’t ten.”

“Half-past nine.”

“You’re right. So it was. And if I don’t deceive myself, my Lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?”

“Of course she was.”

Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to get on with up-stairs; but he must shake hands with Mercury in acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he—this is all he asks—will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties?