"I wonder you didn't have your dinner in the Carlton Hotel, Sarah."
"So I would 'a' done if I'd hev bed time ter chinge me dress. You orter know, Dook, as no lidy ever goes inter them plices in wot she's bin a wearin' afore she cleaned herself. I'ad ter go ter Marlborough 'Ouse ter tell the Prince of Wales, and that's wot kept me."
"Better luck next time, Sarah. So it only ran to a 'fourpenny' between you and 'the Panorama.'"
"You shall all dine with me next week," said the young man in question. "On my honor, I'll give you the best dinner you ever had in your life. As for Sarah here, I'm going to put her in a flower shop in Bond Street."
"Gar'n, silly, what 'ud I do in Bond Street? Much better buy the Archbishop a church."
The erstwhile clergyman did not take the suggestion, in good part.
"I have always doubted my ability to conduct the affairs of a parish methodically," he said, "that is--a little habit--a slight partiality to the drug called morphia is not in my favor. This, I am aware, is a drawback. The world judges my profession very harshly. A man in the city who counts the collection indifferently will certainly become Lord Mayor. The Establishment has no use for him--he is de trop, or as we might say, a drop too much. This I recognize in frankly declining our young friend's offer--with grateful thanks."
Sarah, the flower girl, seemed particularly amused by this frank admission. Feeling in the depth of her shawl she produced a capacious flask and a bundle of cigars.
"'Ere, boys," she said, "let's talk 'am and heggs. 'Ere's a drop of the best and five bob's worth of chimney afire, stun me mother if there ain't. I'm sick of talkin' and so's 'the Panerawma.' Light up yer sherbooks and think as you're in Buckingem Peliss. There ain't no 'arm thinkin' anyways."
"I dreamed last night," said the Archbishop very sadly, "that this cellar had become a cottage and that the sun was shining in it."
"I never dream," said "the Panorama," stoically; "put my head on the floor and I won't lift it until the clock strikes ten."
"Then begin now, my dear," exclaimed the Lady Sarah with a sudden tenderness, "put it there now and forget what London is ter you and me."
The words were uttered almost with a womanly tenderness, not without its influence upon the company. Some phrase spoken of Frivolity's mouth had touched this group of outcasts and spoken straight to their hearts. They bandied, pleasantries no more, but lighting the cigars--the Lady Sarah boldly charging a small clay pipe--they fell to an expressive silence, of introspection, it may be, or even of unutterable despair. The woman alone amongst them had not been cast down from a comparative altitude to this very abyss of destitution. For the others life was a vista far behind them; a vista, perchance, of a cottage and the sunshine, as the parson had said; an echo of voices from a forgotten world; the memory of a hand that was cold and of dead faces reproaching them. Such pauses are not infrequent in the conversation of the very poor. Men bend their heads to destiny less willingly than we think. The lowest remembers the rungs of the ladder he has descended.