336 VAGARIES OF A VISCOUNT.
shift to drink a little, casting furtive glances at Dorking, three boxes off across the gangway.
My gentleman sailor seemed quite at home, swallowing stolidly as though at his own breakfast-table. I grew impa- tient for him to have done, and beguiled the time by study- ing a placard on the wall offering a reward for information as to the whereabouts of a certain ship's cook who was wanted for knifing human flesh. And presently, curiously enough, in comes a police-sergeant on this very matter, and out goes Dorking (rather hastily, I thought), with me at his heels.
No sooner had he got round a corner than he started run- ning at a rate that gave me a stitch in the side. He did not stop till he reached a cab-rank. There was only one vehicle on it, and the coughing, red-nosed driver, unpleas- antly suggesting a mixture of grog and fog, was climbing to his seat when I came cautiously and breathlessly up, and Dorking was returning to his trousers' pocket a jingling mass of gold and silver coins, which he had evidently been exhib- iting to the sceptical cabman. He seemed to walk these regions with the fearlessness of Una in the enchanted forest. I had no resource but to hang on to the rear, despite the alarums of "whip behind," raised by envious and inconsid- erate urchins.
And in this manner, defiantly dodging the cabman, who several times struck me unfairly behind his back, I drove through a labyrinth of sordid streets to the Bethnal Green Museum. Here we alighted, and the Viscount strolled about outside the iron railings, from time to time anxiously scrutinising the church clock and looking towards the foun- tain which only performs in the summer, and was then wear- ing its winter night-cap. At last, as if weary of waiting, he walked with sudden precipitation towards the turnstile,
