"I'll try Walker. Where's his place?"

"Next door the 'Red Lion,' sir."

Then the youth, anxious to atone, and rather quicker-witted than the brown-hued one, got in a word.

"The 'Red Lion' is halfway up the main street, sir. Turn to your right when you leave here, an' you're there in two minutes."

"I'll show the gentleman," said the porter, who had decided a month ago that this blooming kid was putting on airs. He was as good as his word—or nearly so. A tip of half a crown was stupefying, but he gathered his wits in time to say brokenly at the exit:

"Wu-Wu-Walker's is straight up, sir."

Straight up the stranger went. The wide street was crammed with stalls, farmers' carts, carriers' carts, dog-carts, even a couple of automobiles, for Wednesday, being market day, was also police-court day and Board of Guardians day. He passed unheeded. On Wednesdays, Nuttonby was a metropolis; on any other day in the week he would have drawn dozens of curious eyes, peeping surreptitiously over short curtains, or more candidly in the open. Of course, he was seen by many, since Nuttonby was not so metropolitan that it failed to detect a new face, even on Wednesdays; but his style and appearance were of the gentry; Nuttonby decided that he had strayed in from some "big" house in the district.

Walker & Son, it would seem, were auctioneers, land valuers, and probate estimators as well as house agents. Their office was small, but not retiring. It displayed a well-developed rash of sale posters, inside and out. One, in particular, was heroic in size. It told of a "spacious mansion, with well-timbered park," having been put up for auction—five years earlier. Whiteness of paper and blackness of type suggested that Walker & Son periodically renewed this aristocrat among auction announcements—perhaps to kindle a selling spirit among the landed gentry, a notoriously conservative and hold-tight class.

A young man, seated behind a counter, reading a sporting newspaper, and smoking a cigarette, rose hastily when the caller entered.

"Yes, sir," he said, thereby implying instant readiness to engage in one or all of the firm's activities.

"Are you Mr. Walker?" said the newcomer.

"Yes, sir."

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