tention of Pollyooly after her lack of openness, it is to be doubted that Mrs. Meeken brought true happiness to Mr. Gedge-Tomkins. The impression, though he was no expert in the matter, that his rooms were not so clean as in the days of Pollyooly, was growing stronger and stronger in his mind. Also he had not failed to perceive the aroma which Mrs. Meeken diffused into the ambient air of the King's Bench Walk. The Honorable John Ruffin's reference to it had the effect of making his nostrils grow more sensitive to it; and he learned that it was a lingering aroma loath to leave a haunt so proper to it as his blackening chambers. Other matters also troubled him at times; but, absorbed in his work, he could give them but little attention.
It was a full ten days after he had so solemnly warned the Honorable John Ruffin. against Pollyooly that, one morning as she was on the very point of setting the rashers of the Honorable John Ruffin to grill, she heard a loud roaring from the chambers of Mr. Gedge-Tomkins. It was a sound of a surprising volume; and she hastily opened the door of the Honorable John Ruffin's chambers, to discover what it meant, just in time to see Mrs. Meeken
