“Not at all, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely gratified; “it is I who thank you for your charming confidence and for your charming company. Your breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact, and graceful little sitting-room (appropriate to your figure), and I will come to you at ten o’clock in the morning. I hope you don’t feel very strange indeed, in this strange place.”
“O no, I feel so safe!”
“Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fire-proof,” said Mr. Grewgious, “and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be perceived and suppressed by the watchmen.”
“I did not mean that,” Rosa replied. “I mean, I feel so safe from him.”
“There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,” said Mr. Grewgious, smiling; “and Furnival’s is fire-proof, and specially watched and lighted, and I live over the way!” In the stoutness of his knight-errantry, he seemed to think the last-named protection all sufficient. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as he went out, “If some one staying in the hotel should wish to send across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.” In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she might tumble out.
CHAPTER XXI.
A RECOGNITION
Nothing occurred in the night to flutter the tired dove; and the dove arose refreshed. With Mr. Grewgious, when the clock struck ten in the morning, came Mr. Crisparkle, who had come at one plunge out of the river at Cloisterham.
“Miss Twinkleton was so uneasy, Miss Rosa,” he explained to her, “and came round to Ma and me with your note, in such a state of wonder, that, to quiet her, I volunteered on this service by the very first train to be caught in the morning. I wished at the time that you had come to me; but now I think it best that you did as you did, and came to your guardian.”
“I did think of you,” Rosa told him; “but Minor Canon Corner was so near him—”
“I understand. It was quite natural.”