My Cockney friend, having quite clearly “got off,” to use her own phraseology, I decided that it was time to depart. It would be no act of friendship on my part to interfere with a deal, so I slipped out of the club as easily as I had come in, with, at bottom, a feeling of regret. That little Whitechapel club, of which there are so many in the district, is the nearest approach to the familiar café of the continent. There is always the stir of social life, an air of geniality, and the centre of attraction is not the bar, laden with food and drink, but the conversation that circles round the marble-topped tables; you feel that here you will find someone to listen to, if not to talk with, a response to human interest, that fluttering up towards joy, even in the most poverty-stricken, which is so curiously absent from the English teashop.