Anne's commands are spoken very sweetly, and are accompanied by the
sweetest of smiles; but they are nevertheless commands, and somehow
it does not occur to any one to disobey them. John--stern,
masterful, authoritative John, who has never been approached with
anything more dictatorial than a timid request since he left Merchant
Taylors' School nineteen years ago, who would have thought that
something had suddenly gone wrong with the laws of Nature if he had
been--finds himself hurrying along the street on his way to a
druggist's shop, slackens his pace an instant to ask himself why and
wherefore he is doing so, recollects that he was told to do so and to
make haste back, marvels who could have dared to tell him to do
anything and to make haste back, remembers that it was Anne, is not
quite sure what to think about it, but hurries on. He "makes haste
back," is praised for having been so quick, and feels pleased with
himself; is sent off again in another direction, with instructions
what to say when he gets there. He starts off (he is becoming used
to being ordered about now). Halfway there great alarm seizes him,
for on attempting to say over the message to himself, to be sure that
he has it quite right, he discovers he has forgotten it. He pauses,
nervous and excited; cogitates as to whether it will be safe for him
to concoct a message of his own, weighs anxiously the chances--
supposing that he does so--of being found out. Suddenly, to his
intense surprise and relief, every word of what he was told to say
comes back to him; and he hastens on, repeating it over and over to
himself as he walks, lest it should escape him again.

And then a few hundred yards farther on there occurs one of the most
extraordinary events that has ever happened in that street before or
since: John Ingerfield laughs.