replied that he should be glad to see Mrs. Pintle, if convenient.
"What might you wish with Mrs. Pintle?" asked the weak-eyed one.
"I am the late Mr. Pintle's confidential clerk; I wish to speak to her in that capacity."
"Oh! indeed, sir, walk in," said the weak-eyed one, not feeling altogether sure that Johnny had not succeeded notwithstanding the depressing seediness of his appearance, in establishing his title to the visitor's bell after all. He perhaps thought that this melancholy state of things was the natural result of the absorbing nature of the confidences which had been reposed in Johnny by Mr. Pintle. The Queen's Counsel, who dined now and then at the house, were seedy, so, after all, that was no rule. So he showed Johnny into the library, and shortly returned with the information that Mrs. Pintle was in the drawing-room and would see him there. So Johnny walked up the softly-carpeted staircase, with much internal flutter, and much external mopping, and moreover, with much internal clearing of his husky throat. He found Mrs. Pintle dressed in the deepest black, and reclining in a spineless way on a comfortable sofa.
Mrs. Pintle was a lady of fifty, or thereabouts. She was a lank, limp lady, with pale straw-coloured hair turning grey, in that slack-baked pie-crust looking way peculiar to straw-coloured hair in middle age. She was a perfect monument of bombazine, crape, bugles, and jet, and if the depth of her sorrow could be fathomed in any way by reference to the funereal character of her appear-
