“Boy, sir; and worse than fifty boys together, for all he looks so blessed saint-like. Now, Augustus, this ain’t your car! You’ve got to quit. Come along, now, like a good lad. Your ma’s wantin’ you.”
Augustus awaited his approach with complete indifference; only, when the landlord’s nervous fingers closed round him, he opened his mouth to such an appalling extent and with such alarming suggestiveness, that the enemy dropped him like a live coal.
“He do yell that powerful, sir!” he explained apologetically. “You’ve no idea! I’m feared to start him. Seems as if he would bust hisself, at times.”
He made way for various other acquaintances of the interloper, including the policeman, who tried both blandishment and coercion by turn, only to be similarly baffled, watched by Larrupper, leaning against the doorpost, with listless amusement.
“Wantin’ a ride, perhaps,” he observed at last. “Well, I’ve plenty of time for loiterin’. I’ll take him out a mile or two, as he seems to think the old ’bus worth patronisin’. Somebody tell his mother I’ll look after him.”
From the tonneau he unearthed a fur rug and a muffler which he wound round his small passenger; then, scattering the crowd, started the engine, and climbed past Augustus into his seat.
“Happen he’ll want to get out when he feels hisself moving!” the landlord remarked hopefully, but he did not know his man. Augustus sat like a rock. If his face changed at all, it was merely to allow a faint expression of pleasure to find place upon it. So he was carried away, his curls fluttering in the wind of the car, his solemn eyes fixed steadily in front of him.
Larrupper stopped after a short run and suggested return, but found himself met by strong opposition. He went on again, pausing every mile to say—“Shall we be goin’ back, now? Aren’t you gettin’ fed up, old man? Mother will be missin’ you,——” only to have his remarks contemptuously ignored, while the least attempt to turn the car was met by the silent opening of the dreaded mouth.
Even touching insinuations to the effect that he was tired, that the car was tired, that Augustus himself was tired, proved useless, and presently he gave up the struggle. He drove on, immersed in his own thoughts, his cap pulled gloomily to his eyes.
The long weeks in a house of sickness had left him weary both mentally and physically, but he stayed doggedly at Crump, like a hound refusing to leave its master’s door. His affection for Christian had struck deeper roots during this terrible crisis, and though he could do nothing for him, he insisted on stopping near him, worrying the nurses with endless questions, and distracting both Nettie and Parker by declining to eat. Occasionally he drifted up to Dockerneuk, and every day he took bulletins to Kilne, but he could not fathom Deb’s attitude. If he was late, she met him on the road, questioning him with a fierceness that almost frightened him, but when his news was once told, even at its worst, she had seemed curiously indifferent.