unbuttoned; the necktie was holding it in place, but it's got quite
loose now. There! I can do it. I see you've got two funny moles on your
neck, close together. How lucky! That's it!" A final pat!

Now, no woman had ever patted Priam Farll's necktie before, much less
buttoned his collar, and still much less referred to the two little
moles, one hirsute, the other hairless, which the collar hid--when it
was properly buttoned! The experience was startling for him in the
extreme. It might have made him very angry, had the hands of Mrs.
Challice not been--well, nurse's hands, soft hands, persuasive hands,
hands that could practise impossible audacities with impunity. Imagine a
woman, uninvited and unpermitted, arranging his collar and necktie for
him in the largest public room of the Grand Babylon, and then talking
about his little moles! It would have been unimaginable! Yet it
happened. And moreover, he had not disliked it. She sat back in her
chair as though she had done nothing in the least degree unusual.

"I can see you must have been very upset," she said gently, "though he
_has_ only left you a pound a week. Still, that's better than a bat in
the eye with a burnt stick."

A bat in the eye with a burnt stick reminded him vaguely of encounters
with the police; otherwise it conveyed no meaning to his mind.

"I hope you haven't got to go on duty at once," she said after a pause.
"Because you really do look as if you needed a rest, and a cup of tea or
something of that, I'm quite ashamed to have come bothering you so
soon."

"Duty?" he questioned. "What duty?"