XIII
ALCIBIADES
“Oh, do let me have him in the carriage with me; he won’t hurt any one, he’s a perfect angel.”
“Angels like him travels in the dog-box,” said the porter.
Judy ended an agonised search for her pocket.
“Would you be offended,” she said, “if I offered you half-a-crown?”
“Give the guard a bob, Miss.” The hand curved into a cup resting on the carriage window, answered her question. “It’s more’n enough for him, being a single man, whereas me, I’m risking my situation and nine children at present to say no more, when I——”
The turn of a railway key completed the sentence.
Judy and the angel were alone. He was a very nice angel—long-haired and brownly-black—his race the Aberdeen, his name Alcibiades. He put up a respectful and adoring nose, and his mistress kissed him between the eyes.
“How could they try to part us,” she asked, “when there’s only us two left?”
Alcibiades, with swimming eyes, echoed in a little moan of true love the question: “How could they?”