'Ah! In that case it would be Mr. A. Pink. Shouldn't you say
so?'--turning to the less mature clerk, who responded loftily, from a
great distance, and without looking, 'Probably.' Whereupon the elderly
one got down from his stool, and took me himself to the door with 'Mr.
A. Pink' on it, knocked, spoke to someone inside, then ushered me into
the presence of Mr. A. Pink, and withdrew.
The room, I regret to say, did not match its surroundings, and could
not have been thought of in connection with a graveyard. It was quite
modern, with a raised leather wall-paper and revolving chairs. I noticed
this before I saw the tall, thin, depressed-looking gentleman who had
risen, and was bowing to me, at the other end of it. He was as bald as
possible, and might have been fifty, with long, grey side-whiskers, that
fell upon a suit of black, very much wrinkled where Mr. Pink did not
fill it out. His mouth was abruptly turned down at the corners, with
lines of extreme reserve about it, and whatever complexion he might have
had originally was quite gone, leaving only a modified tone of old-gold
behind it. 'Dear me!' I thought, 'there can be nothing interesting or
mysterious here.' Mr. Pink first carefully ascertained whether I was
Miss Wick, of Chicago; after which he did not shake hands, as I had
vaguely expected him to do, being poppa's solicitor, but said, 'Pray
be seated, Miss Wick!'--and we both sat down in the revolving chairs,
preserving an unbroken gravity.
'You have been in London some weeks, I believe, Miss Wick,' said Mr. A.
Pink, tentatively. He did not know quite how long, because for the first
month I had plenty of money, without being obliged to apply for it. I
smiled, and said 'Yes!' with an inflection of self-congratulation. I was
very curious, but saw no necessity for giving more information than was
actually asked for.
'Your--ah--father wrote us that you were coming over alone. That must
have required great courage on the part of'--here Mr. Pink cleared his
throat--'so young a lady;' and Mr. Pink smiled a little narrow, dreary
smile.
'Oh, no!' I said, 'it didn't, Mr. Pink.'
''You are--ah--quite comfortable, I hope, in Cadogan Mansions. I think
it is Cadogan Mansions, is it not?--Yes.'
'Very comfortable indeed, thank you, Mr. Pink. They are comparatively
modern, and the elevator makes it seem more or less like home.'
Mr. Pink brightened; he evidently wished me to be discursive. 'Indeed!'
he said--'Ye-es?'
'Yes,' I returned; 'when I have time I always use the elevator.'
'That is not, I think, the address of the lady your father mentioned to
us as your only relative in London, Miss Wick?' 'Oh no,' I responded,
cheerfully; 'Mrs. Cummers Portheris lives in Half-Moon Street, Mr.
Pink.'
'Ah, so I understand. Pardon the inquiry, Miss Wick, but was there not
some expectation on your father's part that you would pass the time of
your visit in London with Mrs. Portheris?'
'On all our parts, Mr. Pink. But it vanished the day after I
arrived'--and I could not help smiling as I remembered the letter I had
written from the Métropole telling the Wick family about my reception by
my affectionate relation.
Mr. Pink smiled too, a little doubtfully as well as drearily this time.
He did not seem to know quite how to proceed.
'Pardon me again, Miss Wick, but there must be occasions, I should
think, when you would feel your--ah--comparative isolation'--and Mr.
Pink let one of his grey whiskers run through his long, thin hand.
'Very seldom,' I said; 'there is so much to see in London, Mr. Pink.
Even the store-windows are entertaining to a stranger'--and I wondered
more than ever what was coming.
'I see--I see. You make little expeditions to various points of
interest--the Zoological Gardens, the Crystal Palace, and so forth.'
It began to be like the dialogues in the old-fashioned reading-books,
carefully marked I 'Q.' and 'A.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I do. I haven't seen the Zoo yet, but I've seen Mrs. Por------'; there I stopped, knowing that Mr. Pink could not be expected to perceive the sequence of my ideas.
But he seemed to conclude that he had ascertained as much as was
necessary. 'I think, Miss Wick,' he said, 'we must come to the point at
once. You have not been in England long, and you may or may not be aware
of the extreme difficulty which attaches--er--to obtaining--that is to
say, which Amer--foreigners find in obtaining anything like a correct
idea of--of social institutions here. To a person, I may say, without
excellent introductions, it is, generally speaking, impossible.'