‘I know—I mean I can’t help it,’ said Emmeline. ‘But oh, do tell me where it is!’
He gave her the direction, which was a difficult one, involving a formidable number of firsts to right and thirds to the left, and then repeated his warning. ‘But it really aren’t fit for the likes of you to go there alone by yourself. I’d go with you, only it’s out of my beat.’
‘Thank you; you are very kind,’ and Emmeline hurried on for fear of further remonstrance.
Ten minutes’ walking brought her into a part of Eastwich which was so strange to her and such a network of squalid streets that she soon grew confused. No other policeman came in sight, and she began to feel worried as to what she should do. She had always been warned against speaking to strangers except those in uniform; and yet she dared not go any further without asking her way, for fear of losing herself.
Great was her relief when she saw a lady coming towards her who looked as though she might be a clergyman’s wife or a district visitor. Her appearance was so severely respectable that the rule of not speaking to strangers could not apply in this case; so Emmeline went up to the lady and asked timidly the way to Green Ginger Land.
‘Green Ginger Land?’ said the stranger, eyeing her severely. ‘You are surely not thinking of going there?’
‘I—I was thinking of going there,’ stammered Emmeline, confused and ashamed.
‘Well, it’s most unsuitable,’ said the stranger. ‘Green Ginger Land is not at all a nice street for a little girl like you to go to. Why, even policemen don’t walk there alone after dark! Whatever makes you think of going there?’
Now, the sensible thing for Emmeline to have done would have been to tell the simple truth, and to say that she was going to look for her little brother, but somehow the severe stranger’s manner, together with what she said about Green Ginger Land being a dangerous place even for policemen, frightened her out of all presence of mind. At the moment Emmeline only felt in a confused way how very angry and shocked the lady would be if she guessed the truth, and it did not strike her until afterwards that in itself there was nothing in her little brother’s being in Green Ginger Land which implied that it was her fault.
‘I-I thought I’d like to,’ she faltered, turning very red.