Mrs. Postwhistle sat on a Windsor-chair in the centre of Rolls Court.  Mrs. Postwhistle, who, in the days of her Hebehood, had been likened by admiring frequenters of the old Mitre in Chancery Lane to the ladies, somewhat , that an English artist, since become famous, was then commencing to popularise, had developed with the passing years, yet still retained a face of youthfulness.  The two facts, taken in conjunction, had resulted in an asset to her income not to be despised.  The wanderer through Rolls Court this summer’s afternoon, presuming him to be familiar with current , would have haunted by the sense that the restful-looking lady on the Windsor-chair was someone that he ought to know.  Glancing through almost any paper of the period, the problem would have been solved for him.  A photograph of Mrs. Postwhistle, taken quite recently, he would have encountered with this legend: “Before use of Professor Hardtop’s certain cure for corpulency.”  Beside it a photograph of Mrs. Postwhistle, then Arabella Higgins, taken twenty years ago, the legend slightly : “After use,” etc.  The face was the same, the figure—there was no denying it—had undergone .  
Mrs. Postwhistle had reached with her chair the centre of Rolls Court in course of following the sun.  The little shop, over the lintel of which ran: “Timothy Postwhistle, Grocer and Provision Merchant,” she had left behind her in the shadow.  Old inhabitants of St. Dunstan-in-the-West retained recollection of a gentlemanly figure, always in a very gorgeous waistcoat, with Dundreary whiskers, to be seen occasionally there behind the counter.  All customers it would refer, with the air of a Lord High Chamberlain introducing débutantes, to Mrs. Postwhistle, evidently regarding itself as .  For the last ten years, however, no one had noticed it there, and Mrs. Postwhistle had a facility amounting almost to genius for ignoring or misunderstanding questions it was not to her taste to answer.  Most things were suspected, nothing known.  St. Dunstan-in-the-West had turned to other problems.
 
“If I wasn’t wanting to see ’im,” remarked to herself Mrs. Postwhistle, who was knitting with one eye upon the shop, “’e’d a been ’ere ’fore I’d ’ad time to clear the dinner things away; certain to ’ave been.  It’s a strange world.”
 
Mrs. Postwhistle was desirous for the arrival of a gentleman n............