She stood, with one paw delicately held up above the topmost step.
'I don't know this man,' she seemed to say, 'and I don't like his looks.' Hughs grinned.

"I never hurt a dumb animal," he said; "come on, tykie!" Stimulated by a word she had never thought to hear, Miranda descended rapidly.
'He meant that for impudence,' thought Hilary as he walked away.
"Westminister, sir?
Oh dear!" A skinny trembling hand was offering him a greenish newspaper.
"Terrible cold wind for the time o' year!" A very aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose and long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out change for sixpence.
"I seem to know your face," said Hilary.
"Oh dear, yes.

You deals with this 'ere shop--the tobacco department.
I've often seen you when you've a-been agoin' in.

Sometimes you has the Pell Mell off o' this man here." He jerked his head a trifle to the left, where a younger man was standing armed with a sheaf of whiter papers.

In that gesture were years of envy, heart-burning, and sense of wrong.