CHAPTER XI


Laziest of men and worst of correspondents, Robert Narramore had as
yet sent no reply to the letters in which Hilliard acquainted him
with his adventures in London and abroad; but at the end of July he
vouchsafed a perfunctory scrawl. "Too bad not to write before, but
I've been floored every evening after business in this furious heat.
You may like to hear that my uncle's property didn't make a bad
show. I have come in for a round five thousand, and am putting it
into brass bedsteads. Sha'n't be able to get away until the end of
August. May see you then." Hilliard mused enviously on the brass
bedstead business.

On looking in at the Camden Town music-shop about this time he found
Patty Ringrose flurried and vexed by an event which disturbed her
prospects. Her uncle the shopkeeper, a widower of about fifty, had
announced his intention of marrying again, and, worse still, of
giving up his business.

"It's the landlady of the public-house where he goes to play
billiards," said Patty with scornful mirth; "a great fat woman! Oh!
And he's going to turn publican. And my aunt and me will have to
look out for ourselves."

This aunt was the shopkeeper's maiden sister who had hitherto kept
house for him. "She had been promised an allowance," said Patty,
"but a very mean one."

"I don't care much for myself," the girl went on; "there's plenty of