The neighbourhood of Bloomsbury Square towards four o\'clock of a
November afternoon is not so crowded as to secure to the stranger, of
appearance anything out of the common, immunity from observation.
Tibb\'s boy, screaming at the top of his voice that _she_ was his honey,
stopped suddenly, stepped backwards on to the toes of a voluble young
lady wheeling a perambulator, and remained deaf, apparently, to the
somewhat personal remarks of the voluble young lady. Not until he had
reached the next corner--and then more as a soliloquy than as information
to the street--did Tibb\'s boy recover sufficient interest in his own affairs to
remark that _he_ was her bee. The voluble young lady herself, following
some half-a-dozen yards behind, forgot her wrongs in contemplation of
the stranger\'s back. There was this that was peculiar about the stranger\'s
back: that instead of being flat it presented a decided curve. "It ain\'t a
\'ump, and it don\'t look like kervitcher of the spine," observed the voluble
young lady to herself. "Blimy if I don\'t believe \'e\'s taking \'ome \'is washing
up his back."
The constable at the corner, trying to seem busy doing nothing, noticed
the stranger\'s approach with gathering interest. "That\'s an odd sort of a
walk of yours, young man," thought the constable. "You take care you
don\'t fall down and tumble over yourself."
"Thought he was a young man," murmured the constable, the stranger
having passed him. "He had a young face right enough."
The daylight was fading. The stranger, finding it impossible to read
the name of the street upon the corner house, turned back.