It might have made him very angry, had the hands of Mrs.
Challice not been--well, nurse's hands, soft hands, persuasive hands, hands that could practise impossible audacities with impunity.

Imagine a woman, uninvited and unpermitted, arranging his collar and necktie for him in the largest public room of the Grand Babylon, and then talking about his little moles! It would have been unimaginable! Yet it happened.

And moreover, he had not disliked it.

She sat back in her chair as though she had done nothing in the least degree unusual.
"I can see you must have been very upset," she said gently, "though he _has_ only left you a pound a week.

Still, that's better than a bat in the eye with a burnt stick." A bat in the eye with a burnt stick reminded him vaguely of encounters with the police; otherwise it conveyed no meaning to his mind.
"I hope you haven't got to go on duty at once," she said after a pause.
"Because you really do look as if you needed a rest, and a cup of tea or something of that, I'm quite ashamed to have come bothering you so soon." "Duty ?" he questioned.