“Let me go! Let me go!” cried frightened and struggling Elsie.
“Sure an’ I’ll not, then! I’ll jest have a kiss and maybe more from the swate girl of my heart,” and his strong arms were just about to bring the flushed and frightened face within range of his lips, when a firm hand clutched his coat collar and sent him spinning into the street. Glancing up he met the indignant eyes of Herbert Lynn.
“It isn’t a very safe thing, young man, for you to insult ladies in this manner, and you may congratulate yourself on getting off with scant justice. The best thing you can do is to go home and reform some of your free-and-easy habits.”
William shuffled off maddened and revengeful. “Ah, but I’ll fix him and the girl too. Sure and the high hand isn’t always for the mighty millionaire. And it’s him, is it, that’s stealing my girl’s heart away? Well, then, an’ I’ll ’umble ’em, sure. I’m after thinking the mistress with her fine airs will not be as swate as the summer when she finds her brother is comin’ it asy over the purty cook.”
Elsie, released from William’s grasp, darted up the stairs, but half-way up the first flight she sank down in fright and exhaustion. Springing up two steps at a time, Herbert followed and bent over her. “Elsie! Elsie!” he cried, “what is it? Are you faint? Here, let me steady you,” and with the same audacity which he had indignantly rebuked in William, he slipped an arm round Elsie’s waist and endeavored to lift her up.
“I don’t need any help,” she said, struggling to her feet and making frantic efforts to free herself from the detaining arm. “I can go alone a good deal better. Please take your arm away.”
“No, thank you; it is quite too comfortable,” replied Herbert composedly.
“And succeeds in making me very uncomfortable. I entreat you to release me.” Elsie glanced up into a pair of blue eyes, in whose depths lay a light so warm and tender, that she staggered dizzily against the wall when Herbert’s encircling arm was removed.
“There, I knew you couldn’t go alone. Now I insist upon being permitted to help you up the stairs. I therefore offer you, in the most decorous manner possible, the despised and rejected arm.”
Herbert stood before her with crooked elbow and attitude so ludicrously stiff, that in the laugh which rose to her lips the constraint of the situation passed away, and she not only accepted the arm, but made no remonstrance when, before the third flight had been reached, the despised member, by some legerdermain best known to lovers perhaps, had been restored to its original offensive position. It still lay supine and satisfied around the slender waist when the two reached Margaret’s door and found it locked.