“Now then, now then,” he said. “What’s all this ’ere?”
And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear. “It’s—it’s alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that’s all. He’s—he’s a paller mine. Well run, Ernie!” And he put his arm round Treadwell’s shoulders, laughing.
And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of those panting men. “Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins,” he said, to the nice little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the area steps. “Set up ’eart trouble if yer not careful.”
Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood. It put them on another footing, they could see.
After a few more words of badinage the policeman mooched off to finish his talk with the tall-hatted keeper of the Albany doorway. And Simpkins said gravely and quietly, “Treadwell, we’ve got to go into this, you and me. We’re in the same boat and Lola’s got ter be—looked after, by both of us.”
Treadwell nodded. “I’m frightened,” he said, without camouflage.
And they went off together, slowly, brought into confidence by a mutual heart trouble that had already set up.
But there was no uneasiness in Queen’s Road, Bayswater. John Breezy and his good wife were happy in the belief that their little girl was enjoying the air and scents of the country with her ladyship. They had neither the time nor the desire to dig deeply into the daily papers. To read of the weathercock policy of the overburdened Prime Minister, traditionally, nationally, and mentally unable to deal with the great problems that followed upon each other’s heels, made Breezy blasphemous and brought on an incapacity to sit still. And so he merely glanced at the front page, hoping against hope for a new government headed by such men as Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Lord Grey and Edmund Fallaray, and for the ignominious downfall of all professional scavengers, titled newspaper owners and mountebanks who were playing ducks and drakes with the honor and the traditions of Parliament. He had no wish to be under the despotism of a Labor Government, having seen that loyalty to leaders was unknown among Trades Unionists and that principles were things which they never had had and never would have the courage to avow.