“I’ll soon tell you if he did!” cried Pocket. “There were fourteen in the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only shot away one at the Knaggses’ before we were cobbed. That left thirteen—six in the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six, and here’s one, two, three, four—and three’s seven!”
He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for herself, while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He was beginning to see what it all meant now, but still only what it meant to him and his. He could look his people in the face again; that was the burden of his loud thanksgiving. He was as sure of his innocence as though the dead man had risen to prove it.
“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the more reason you should go this minute, and catch the very first train home.”
And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping him on with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he followed her out slowly, and he would not turn his back.
“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it from her side at last.
“Why not?”
“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave you with a man like that!”
So Pocket, without a moment’s thought either for her immediate feelings or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious air of sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have flung open the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it first. So her big eyes blazed at him instead.
“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I don’t believe a word you say against my uncle behind his back?”
“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for waiting.”