It was impossible to refuse her brave rescuer such a trifling request, so she put the watch into one of his very grimy hands.
‘Much obliged to you!’ he said, with a good-natured laugh. ‘So long!’ and before Emmeline, in her amazement, had realised what was happening, he had slipped back into Paradise Court.
For an instant she gazed blankly, scarcely believing her own senses. Then a roar of laughter from the onlookers maddened her into recklessness, and she was just going to rush down the steps again in pursuit of Bully Ben, when someone caught her firmly by the sleeve and held her back.
‘Don’t you never go in there again,’ whispered a girl’s voice in her ear. ’Tisn’t safe. There was a preaching bloke got his head split open in there only last Sunday. Just you run away before there’s anything worse happens.’
The speaker was ragged and dirty, like everyone else in Green Ginger Land, and Emmeline was more than half-inclined to take her for an accomplice of Bully Ben’s, and to disregard the warning. She hesitated, equally unable to make up her mind to resign her watch, or to screw up her courage to plunge back into that terrible court, and as she wavered the children began to gather close again.
‘Just you run away,’ said the girl more urgently than before.
It is hard to say what would have happened if Emmeline had not just then felt something sting her cheek. It was only a piece of banana-peel, but such a yell of triumph rose from the spectators that she was seized with panic and fled headlong, pursued by the howling mob of children.
On and on she ran, still seeming to hear the shouts of her pursuers, till she had got far outside the borders of Green Ginger Land. Still she ran blindly on, till at last she was brought to a sudden standstill by bumping so violently against a fat old lady as almost to knock her down.
‘Well!’ ejaculated the old lady, as soon as she had regained her breath, ‘you are a rude little girl!’