That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, had got to the cherry-tart before a passing neighbour, looking in at their window, acquainted them what had happened. If after Michael come from the bake-'us with the meat, which kep' hot stood under its cover in the sun all of five minutes and no one any the worse, while the old lady boiled a potato--if Michael had not been preoccupied with a puppy in this interim, he might easy have seen the culprit took away in the boat. He regretted his loss; but his aunt, from whom we borrow a word now and then, pointed out to him that we must not expect everything in this world. Also the many blessings that had been vouchsafed to him by a Creator who had his best interests at heart. Had he not vouchsafed him a puppy?--on lease certainly; but he would find that puppy here next time he visited Hammersmith, possibly firmer in his gait and nothing like so round over the stomach. And there was the cherry-tart, and the crust had rose beautiful.
Michael got home very late, and was professionally engaged all the week with his father. He saw town, but nothing of his neighbours, returning always towards midnight intensely ready for bed. By the time he chanced across our friend Dave on the following Saturday, other scenes of London Life had obscured his memory of that interview at The Pigeons and its sequel. So, as it happened, Sapps Court heard nothing about either.
The death of Miss Hawkins's father, a month later, did not add a contemptible manslaughter to Thornton Daverill's black list of crimes. For the surgeon who attended him--while admitting to her privately that, of course, it was the blow on the temple that brought about the cause of death--denied that it was itself the cause; a nice distinction. But it seemed needless to add to the score of a criminal with enough to his credit to hang him twice over; especially when an Inquest could be avoided by accommodation with Medical Jurisprudence. So the surgeon, at the earnest request of the dead man's daughter, made out a certificate of death from something that sounded plausible, and might just as well have been cessation of life. It was nobody's business to criticize it, and nobody did.