“I don’t know. As soon as I can.”
“Will you to-morrow?”
To-morrow happened to be Thursday. It was not Edwin’s free afternoon, but it was an afternoon to which a sort of licence attached. He yielded to the ruthless egotism of the child.
“All right!” he said.
“You won’t forget?”
“You can rely on me. Ask your auntie if you may go, and if she says you may, be ready for me to pull you up over the wall here, about three o’clock.”
“Auntie will have to let me go,” said George, in a savage tone, as Edwin helped him to slip down into the garden of the Orgreaves. Edwin went off to business with a singular consciousness of virtue, and with pride in his successful manner of taming wayward children, and with a very strong new interest in the immediate future.