Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said: "I wish you good luck,
sir." And the Captain said: "I'm coming back a Major,
Prentiss." But he never came back. And one day--the Lion
remembered the day very well, for on that same day the
newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street shouting out the news of
"a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms. It was then that a
young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss went out to
meet her and led her upstairs. They heard him unlock the
Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he
had gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre
table. She stood there for a very long time looking slowly about
her, and then she took a photograph of the Captain from the frame
on the mantel and slipped it into her pocket, and when she went
out again her veil was down, and she was crying. She must have
given Prentiss as much as a sovereign, for he called her "Your
ladyship," which he never did under a sovereign.

And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could
they hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere
up St. John's Wood way.

After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and
the Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful
ladies and smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy
flowers and "buttonholes," and the little round baskets of
strawberries, and even the peaches at three shillings each, which
looked so tempting as they lay in the window, wrapped up in
cotton-wool, like jewels of great price.

Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard