“Insolent trick,” went on Miss Connaughton. The remainder was a jumble.
Agatha told Mr. McVicar about it. “I—can’t—go—home,” she said. “This—evening—is—dreadfully—important. Don’t—you—think—so?”
“YES,” he wrote—all in capitals. Offering her his arm, he hurried her away.
It was not an ideal evening for Jones Street. There were clouds overhead in massive motion before a hot wind. The gas-jets leaped and hissed down the narrow streets, which looked particularly dark and forbidding. Perhaps the children would not dance on the pavement that night. Agatha did not care.
Mr. McVicar obviously did not feel as cheerful as she. It was as if all the heart had gone out of him. And he kept looking back. It made Agatha nervous. She took to glancing behind also. What was he expecting?
They approached the lone figure of a man—a forlorn figure that slouched into the entrance of a building just ahead. Mr. McVicar crossed the street. They passed other figures. He looked each over keenly. She shivered a little. Oh, she was glad he was so big!
They hurried forward. Each thoroughfare seemed to grow narrower and gloomier than the last. They turned innumerable corners, Agatha clinging to his arm with increasing timidity. All at once, on turning another corner into a street that looked very much like one they had already traversed, they came face to face with two swarthy-skinned persons, a man and a woman. The pair were evidently gipsies, for the woman wore a red handkerchief upon her head, while big, gold earrings swung against the neck of the man. The latter carried a monkey. He did not get out of the way. Instead, leering, he held out a hand.
“Give me da mon for da monk!” he cried.
“Hurry!” Agatha entreated. Oh, for Auntie’s brougham now!
Instead of hastening, Mr. McVicar faced the man and gave him a resounding cuff upon the ear. Agatha, the sociologist, became that moment just a normal, terror-stricken girl. She screamed. With her cry mingled the raucous protests of the man and the hoarse commands of the woman, for Mr. McVicar now had the former by the shoulders and was shaking him fiercely.