"God save the King!" she cried.
In a moment she was asleep again, and I slipped from the room. I was a king no longer. She slept well that night.
Old White-whiskers had his points after all. He took it into his head to have a look into his cottages himself, and in consequence a highly respectable firm lost a highly lucrative job. When Elsie and her mother get back from the seaside—White-whiskers is paying for them—they will find their cottage in decent repair.
And this morning I take the road again, never to return. Of course Mrs Crewe thinks that it is her wise counsel which has kept me out of the hands of the hangman; but that is not so.
I have not seen Bates again, and I have planned not to see him again, lest at the sight of him I should forget a decision to which I came when that kid of Mrs Crewe's sat up in bed and called upon God to save the King.
THE SATYR
Myra Larose was a good governess, capable, and highly certificated.
At Salston Hill School they rewarded her services with forty pounds per annum, and board and lodging during term-time. She had often been fortunate enough to secure private pupils for the holidays, and she knew a stationer who bought hand-painted Christmas cards. At the end of four years' work she had thirty-five pounds saved and in the Post Office. And then Aunt Jane, the last of her relatives, died, and left her a fine two hundred and fifty. This meant another ten pounds per annum.
Things were not so bad, but they did not, of course, justify the very mad idea that came into her pretty head—a head that, so far, had proved itself sane and practical.