"I bid ye be quiet, Sam Hodgson," she was saying to the expostulating constable. "Man, if you dare to get in my way, I'll take the whip to ye. To heel, I say! 'Mr. Rogers's orders?' Damn your impidence, what do I care for Mr. Rogers? Why hallo, Jack!—"
As her gaze travelled round the room, Mr. Rogers stepped up and addressed the constable across her.
"It's all right, Hodgson: you may go back to your post. Begad, Lydia," he added as the constable withdrew, "this is a queer hour for a call."
But Miss Belcher's gaze moved slowly from the Rector—whose bow she answered with a curt nod—to me, and from me to the figure of Whitmore by the fireplace.
"What's wrong?" she demanded. "Lord, if he's not fainting!"—and as she ran, the curate swayed and almost fell into her arms. "Brandy, Jack! I saw a bottle in the next room, didn't I? No, thank ye, Rector. I can manage him."
As Mr. Rogers hurried back for the brandy, she lifted the man and carried him, rejecting our help, to an armchair beside the window. There for a moment, standing with her back to us, she peered into his face and (as I think now) whispered a word to him.
"Open the window, boy—he wants air," she called to me, over her shoulder.
While I fumbled to draw the curtains she reached an arm past me and flung them back: and so with a turn of the wrist unlatched the casement and thrust the pane wide. In doing so she leaned the weight of her body on mine, pressing me back among the curtain-folds.
I heard a cry from the Rector. An oath from Mr. Rogers answered it. But between the cry and the answer Mr. Whitmore had rushed past me and vaulted into the night.
"Confound you, Lydia!" Mr. Rogers set down the tray with a crash, and leapt over it towards the window, finding his whistle and blowing a shrill call as he ran. "We'll have him yet! Tell Hodgson to take the lane. Oh, confound your interference!"