9“It took me some time to get from the yard of Thunderstone House to the office in which these inscriptions were displayed. Fanny had told me to ask for Mr. Cheeseman, and when I had discovered and entered the doorway up a flight of steps, which had at first been masked by two large vans, I made this demand of an extremely small young lady enclosed in a kind of glass cage. She had a round face and a bright red button of a nose. She was engaged, I realised slowly, in removing a foreign stamp from a fragment of envelope by licking the back of the paper. She did not desist from this occupation but mutely asked my business with her eyes.
“‘Oran-amoiment?’ she asked, still licking.
“‘Pardon?’
“‘Oran-amoiment?’
“‘I’m sorry,’ I said, I don’t get it quite.’
“‘Mus’ be deaf,’ she said, putting
