'That's the best thing that could happen.'
'You don't mean that you mean to let it out?'
'If you expect me to tell lies for you, you are out there.'
'But, Lance, Lance,' in an agony, 'you wouldn't be such a sneak, when I trusted you?'
Lance laughed. The bare idea of betrayal seemed so absurd, that he scarcely thought it worth removing.
The two were slackening their pace as they saw Felix at the carriage-door of a lady customer; and Lance said gravely, 'I'll see to Mother Goldie; but now, Bear, that you are out of this scrape, I give you fair warning, that if I find you grubbing your nose into that sort of thing again, I'll put a stop to it, one way or another.'
'I'm not a bit worse than the rest. All the other fellows do it.'
'Oh, I suppose, if you think Stingo the right thing in dogs, you think Nares the right thing in fellows!'
At that moment the customer drove off, and Felix having spied the blue sun-shade, tarried at the door to administer a remonstrance to Lance on being so foolish as to venture into the noon-day sun. He was not able to come in to dinner till it was half over, and then it was with a merry look and question, 'What's this, boys, about Mowbray Smith being mobbed in Smoke-jack Alley and your making in to the rescue?'
'Oh,' said Lance, 'there was an attempt at getting up a shindy, but it was of the meanest description. No one knew how to set about it. There was only one Irishman there, and he was a woman.' (This with a wink to Sibby.)