station to carry portmanteaux; I'd be a postman. But they won't
LOOK at you; there are thousands as good as yourself already on the
ground. GENTLEMEN, poor beggars, who've drunk their wine, who've
kept their hunters!"

I was as reassuring as I knew how to be, and my visitors were
presently on their feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed
on an hour. We were discussing it when the door opened and Miss
Churm came in with a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take the
omnibus to Maida Vale and then walk half a mile. She looked a
trifle blowsy and slightly splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come
in without thinking afresh how odd it was that, being so little in
herself, she should yet be so much in others. She was a meagre
little Miss Churm, but was such an ample heroine of romance. She
was only a freckled cockney, but she could represent everything,
from a fine lady to a shepherdess, she had the faculty as she might
have had a fine voice or long hair. She couldn't spell and she
loved beer, but she had two or three "points," and practice, and a
knack, and mother-wit, and a whimsical sensibility, and a love of
the theatre, and seven sisters,--and not an ounce of respect,
especially for the H. The first thing my visitors saw was that her
umbrella was wet, and in their spotless perfection they visibly
winced at it. The rain had come on since their arrival.

"I'm all in a soak; there WAS a mess of people in the 'bus. I wish
you lived near a stytion," said Miss Churm. I requested her to get
ready as quickly as possible, and she passed into the room in which
she always changed her dress. But before going out she asked me
what she was to get into this time.