drag one foot after another. I just felt as if I was going to be ill. I could have kept on crying all the time. 

 “Have either of you got any money?” asked Tom. Neither Emily nor I had a penny. “Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do; we’ll all three of us go into Firandolo’s, and I’ll stand Sam.” 

 I knew he had only enough money to take him home on Sunday, because he had told me so himself the day before. Cardew & Slaughter’s is not the sort of place where they encourage you to spend Sunday in. He had been in last Sunday; and to stop in two Sundays running was to get yourself disliked; I have spent many a Sunday, loitering about the parks and the streets, living on a couple of buns, rather than go in to what they called dinner. And I knew that if we once set foot in Firandolo’s we should spend all he had. Yet I was so faint and hungry that I did not want much pressing. I could not find it in my heart to refuse. 

 Firandolo’s is something like a restaurant. Including vegetables, and sweets, and cheese, I have counted sixty-seven dishes on the bill of fare at one time, so that you have plenty of choice. For a shilling you can get a perfectly splendid dinner. And for sixpence you can get soup, and bread and cheese and butter; and they bring you the soup in a silver basin which is full to the brim. 

 At night it is generally crowded, but it was perhaps because the weather was so bad that there were only a few persons in the place when we went in. Directly after we entered someone else came in. He was a big man, and wore a reefer coat and a bowler hat. Seating himself at a table immediately opposite ours, taking off his hat, he wiped his forehead with an old bandanna handkerchief; though what there was to make him warm on a night like that was more than I could say. He had a fringe of iron-grey hair all round his head on a level with his ears. It stood out stiffly, like a sort of crown. Above and below it he was bald. He wore a bristly moustache, and his eyes were almost hidden by the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. I could not help noticing him, because I had a kind of fancy that he had been following us for some time. Unless I was mistaken he had passed me just as I had come out of Cardew & Slaughter’s; and ever since, whenever I looked round, I saw him somewhere behind us, as if he were keeping us in sight. I said nothing about it to the others, but I wondered, all the same. I did not like his looks at all. He seemed to me to be both sly and impudent; and though he pretended not to be watching us, I do not believe he took his eyes off us for a single moment. 

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