This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
70
POLLYOOLY

dens on the Thames Embankment, and let him play there for the rest of the morning.

When she returned to the Temple at half-past one, there, knocking patiently on the Honorable John Ruffin's oak, stood the red- faced man.

"'As 'e come in?" he said gloomily.

"I haven't seen him come in," said Pollyooly coldly but with literal accuracy, and she and the Lump went into Mr. Gedge-Tomkins' chambers.

Pollyooly was in a quandary. Both their dinner and her money were in the chambers of the Honorable John Ruffin; and the red-nosed man stood an insuperable and patiently knocking barrier between.

She watched him through the letter-box of Mr. Gedge-Tomkins with growing impatience. He seemed to her to be a creature of the most painful persistence, for he stood there, rapping at intervals for nearly twenty minutes; and the Lump, usually the most placid of children, was pulling at her frock, and protesting that he was hungry in an uncommonly querulous tone.

Pollyooly was debating in her active mind whether she should sally forth with him to the