Before she could put the tray down on the table, the rosetted steward, who looked pale, snatched one of the glasses and gulped down its entire contents.
“I wanted it!” said he, smacking his lips. “I wanted it bad. They’ll catch ’em all right. I should know the young ’un again anywhere. I’ll swear to identify her in any court. And I will. Tasty little piece o’ goods, too! ... But not so good-looking as you,” he added, gazing suddenly at Audrey.
“None o’ your sauce,” snapped Audrey, and walked off, leaving the tray behind.
The two men exploded into coarse but amiable laughter, and called to her to return, but she would not. “You can pay the other young lady,” she said over her shoulder, pointing vaguely to the counter where there was now a bevy of other young ladies.
Five minutes later Miss Ingate, and the chauffeur also, received a very appreciable shock. Half an hour later the car, having called at the telegraph office, and also at the aghast lodgings of the waitresses to enable them to reattire and to pack, had quitted Birmingham.
That night they reached Northampton. At the post office there Jane Foley got a telegram. And when the three were seated in a corner of the curtained and stuffy dining-room of the small hotel, Jane said, addressing herself specially to Audrey:
“It won’t be safe for us to return to Paget Gardens to-morrow. And perhaps not to any of our places in London.”
“That won’t matter,” said Audrey, who was now becoming accustomed to the world of conspiracy and chicane in which Jane Foley carried on her existence with such a deceiving air of the matter-of-fact. “We’ll go anywhere, won’t we, Winnie?”
And Miss Ingate assented.
“Well,” said Jane Foley. “I’ve just had a telegram arranging for us to go to Frinton.”