Job disappeared and Mr. Gurd explained.

"My good neighbour at 'The Seven Stars'--her with the fine pleasure
gardens and swings and so on. And Job Legg's her potman. Her husband's
right hand while he lived, and now hers. I have the use of their
stable-yard market days, for their custom is different from mine. A
woman's house and famous for her meat teas and luncheons. She does very
well and deserves to."

"That old lady with the yellow wig?"

Mr. Gurd pursed his lips.

"To you she might seem old, I suppose. That's the spirit that puts a bit
of a strain on the middle-aged and makes such men as me bring home to
ourselves what we said and thought when we were young. 'Tis just the
natural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say Nelly Northover's an old
woman--her being perhaps eight-and-forty. And to call her hair a wig,
because she's fortified it with home-grown what's fallen out over a
period of twenty years, is again only the insolence of youth. One can
only say 'forgive 'em, for they know not what they do.'"

"Well, get me another brandy anyway."

Then entered Raymond Ironsyde, and Mr. Gurd for once felt genuinely
sorry to see his customer.

The young man was handsome with large, luminous, grey eyes, curly, brown
hair and a beautiful mouth, clean cut, full, firm and finely modelled in
the lips. His nose was straight, high in the nostril and sensitive. He