“What’s all this about?” demanded the constable.
“Please, my name is Charles Michael Saxby Fane and I live at 64 Carlington Road and I want to go home.”
Michael burst into tears and the policeman bent over and led him by a convulsed hand to the police station. There he was seated in a wooden chair, while various policemen in various states of undress came and talked kindly to him, and in the end, riding on the shoulder of his original rescuer, he arrived at the tall thin house from whose windows Nurse was peering, anxious and monkey-like.
There seemed to be endless talk about his adventure. All day the affair was discussed, all day he was questioned and worried and scolded and threatened. Treats faded from possible granting for months to come. Restrictions and repressions assumed gigantic proportions, and it was not until Nanny went upstairs to put Stella to bed and left Michael in the kitchen with Mrs. Frith and Annie that his adventure came to seem a less terrible breach of natural law. Away from Nurse, the cook and the housemaid allowed a splendid laxity to gild their point of view.
“Well, what a fuss about nothing,” said Mrs. Frith comfortably. “I declare. And what was she doing? That’s what some people would like to know. You can’t lose a child the same as you might lay down a thimble. I call it very careless.”
“Yes. What a shame!” Annie agreed. “Supposing he’d of been run over.”
“He might of been run over a dozen times,” said Mrs Frith. “It’s all very fine to put all the blame on the poor child, but what was she doing?”
Then Mrs. Frith closed her right eye, tightened her mouth and very slowly nodded her head until the most of her pleated chin was buried in the bib of her apron.
“That’s what I thought,” said Annie mysteriously.
“What did you think, Annie?” Michael asked fretfully.