MR. S M E E T H IS WORRIED 457

Cheapside, and they took him to St. Bartholomew's."

"Well, you surprise me! I'm sorry to hear that. Is
he bad?"

"We don't know yet. He didn't seem so bad last night,
because he got a message through to my mother and she
went to see him and he gave her the key here and asked
if I'd look after the shop for him, because he knew I
wasn't doing anything and I'd worked once in a tobac-
conist's before—well, tobacconist's and sweets', it was,
not like this, y'know—so it didn't sound as if it was bad,
with him being able to talk and arrange things like that,
but the doctor told my mother it was worse than it
looked, for all that, and it might be a nasty long job,
and she's going again to-day. I'm his niece, you see/*
"Poor old chap! I am sorry about this," said Mr,
Srneeth, who was indeed genuinely distressed. "You
must let rne know how he goes on/' He had to point
out to her the tin canister that held T. Benenden's Own
Mixture and had even to tell her the price of it. When
he rejoined Turgis outside, he could talk of nothing else
for the next five minutes. This one morning, not con-
tent with removing Stanley from Angel Pavement for
ever, had gone and swept Benenden out of sight, put a
plump young woman with ginger hair behind the
counter and turned Benenden into a mysterious suffer-
ing figure in a hospital. Benenden and Angel Pavement
had been inseparable in his mind for years, and now the
thought of Benenden not being there, no longer wait-
ing, tie-less, behind his dusty counter, gave the whole
place a queer look. Turgis had been in the shop many
a time for cigarettes, but, being one of the "packet o*
gaspers" customers, he could not really claim to be
acquainted with Benenden. By the time Mr. Smeeth