As he turned into Soho Square, and directed his steps towards its north
side, a deepened colour shot across his sun-browned face, which Wilding,
if he had been a better observer, or had been less occupied with his own
trouble, might have noticed when his partner read aloud a certain passage
in their Swiss correspondent's letter, which he had not read so
distinctly as the rest.

A curious colony of mountaineers has long been enclosed within that small
flat London district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss silver-chasers,
Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of
various kinds, draw close together there. Swiss professors of music,
painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers,
and other Swiss servants chronically out of place; industrious Swiss
laundresses and clear-starchers; mysteriously existing Swiss of both
sexes; Swiss creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be trusted by
all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no means; these diverse Swiss
particles are attracted to a centre in the district of Soho. Shabby
Swiss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and lodging-houses, Swiss drinks and
dishes, Swiss service for Sundays, and Swiss schools for week-days, are
all to be found there. Even the native-born English taverns drive a sort
of broken-English trade; announcing in their windows Swiss whets and
drams, and sheltering in their bars Swiss skirmishes of love and
animosity on most nights in the year.

When the new partner in Wilding and Co. rang the bell of a door bearing
the blunt inscription OBENREIZER on a brass plate--the inner door of a
substantial house, whose ground story was devoted to the sale of Swiss
clocks--he passed at once into domestic Switzerland. A white-tiled stove
for winter-time filled the fireplace of the room into which he was shown,