‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded of Emmeline. ‘You’d have had a rough time of it, I can tell you, if I hadn’t have come out.’
‘I know,’ said Emmeline, almost in tears—somehow it seemed harder not to break down now that the great danger appeared to be over—‘it was so very, very good of you, and I do thank you! But oh, can you tell me where a Mother Grimes lives? I believe my little brother’s at her house, and I’ve come to look for him.’
‘Mother Grimes?’ said the youth, ‘why, she’s a pal of mine. But what have your little brother gone there for? Judging by you, he won’t be the sort of lodger that’s much in her line.’
‘He ran away with a boy named Diamond Jubilee Jones, whom we’d—I mean, he’d come to stay with us for a day or two,’ explained Emmeline, rather confusedly. ‘I suppose you haven’t happened to see him anywhere?’
‘I seed him not an hour ago, and a little chap with him that must have been your brother,’ said Bully Ben promptly. ‘They told me they was off to the Fair, an’ wouldn’t be back till tea-time.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ cried Emmeline. ‘I’ll go there to find him, then.’
‘I reckon I’ll just see you safe out of these parts,’ said Bully Ben graciously—an offer which she was only too thankful to accept, for those dreadful children were still lingering about, as though waiting to renew the attack as soon as Bully Ben’s broad back should be turned.
Emmeline stole timid side-glances at her burly escort as they two left Paradise Court together, with a crowd of derisive children in the rear—at a safe distance. He looked an extremely rough type of lad, and Emmeline had just decided that he was like one of those burglars in stories, whose hearts are always touched by innocent and helpless children, when he asked her the time.
The question, though rather unexpected, sounded harmless enough, so Emmeline pulled out her beloved little gold watch, and politely gave him the information he required.
‘That’s a rare fine watch,’ he remarked. ‘Let’s have a look at that.’