who seemed to be red-hot.
“Is your business done, Alfred?” inquired the lady.
“Very thoroughly done,” replied the gentleman, as he took his hat from her.
“You can go up to Mr. Fledgeby as soon as you like,” said the lady, moving haughtily away.
“Oh! And you can take these three pieces of stick with you,” added the gentleman politely, “and say, if you please, that they come from Mr. Alfred Lammle, with his compliments on leaving England. Mr. Alfred Lammle. Be so good as not to forget the name.”
The three pieces of stick were three broken and frayed fragments of a stout lithe cane. Miss Jenny taking them wonderingly, and the gentleman repeating with a grin, “ Mr. Alfred Lammle, if you’ll be so good. Compliments, on leaving England,” the lady and gentleman walked away quite deliberately, and Miss Jenny and her crutch-stick went upstairs. “Lammle, Lammle, Lammle?” Miss Jenny repeated as she panted from stair to stair, “where have I heard that name? Lammle, Lammle? I know! Saint Mary Axe!”
With a gleam of new intelligence in her sharp face, the dolls’ dressmaker pulled at Fledgeby’s bell. No one answered; but, from within the chambers, there proceeded a continuous spluttering sound of a highly singular and unintelligible nature.
“Good gracious! Is Little Eyes choking?” cried Miss Jenny.
Pulling at the bell again and getting no reply, she pushed the outer door, and found it standing ajar. No one being visible on her opening it wider, and the spluttering continuing, she took the liberty of opening an inner door, and then beheld the extraordinary spectacle of Mr. Fledgeby