"If you don't like to go out with her, you can stay at home."
Puggy knew the Squire too well by this time to dream of protesting further, but he prepared himself to be very disagreeable, and when Puggy was disagreeable, he made every one near him very uncomfortable. Christina was his butt; when Mr. and Mrs. Maclahan had gone, he made her shiver in her shoes by his dark descriptions of cab drives in London.
"The horses are always starved, and they tumble down. I saw a little girl come crashing through a cab window once, and bits of glass were sticking in her face just like pins in a pincushion, and it was because the cab horse tumbled. And all cabmen in London are drunk, and they drive anyhow, and crash into motor-cars and kill people by hundreds; and cabs in London are always nearly worn out: their wheels fly off, and then down they go! If the Squire had let us walk to Dawn's house, we should have got there safely; but he makes us come in a cab, and we're positively certain to have an accident, so if we're all killed it won't be my fault, and I shall tell them so!"
"But," said Christina, trying to disguise her terror at such a catalogue of evils, "if you're killed, you won't be able to say anything!"
"Oh, I shall manage to let them know," said Puggy with an emphatic nod of his round head.
When they started in a four-wheeler, Christina's nerves were on edge. She clutched hold of Blanche, who sat beside her, and asked her appealingly if there was any danger.
"Of course there isn't," said Blanche soothingly.
"You're sitting on danger," said Puggy darkly; "this cab smells of smallpox. A fellow at my school got into a cab just like this and died of the smallpox a month afterwards. They always take smallpox people in those cabs—that's why my sister goes in hansoms; she says you're bound to get awful diseases in these cabs."
"Hold your tongue!" snapped Blanche crossly.
She was peculiarly nervous about taking infection, and Puggy knew it.