“Well, you don’t let the grass grow under your feet,” observed Rudolph, laughing.
Being naturally of a rather dreamy and indolent temperament, he was not accustomed to getting over the ground with the rapidity at which Stephen led him.
“There’s never time to waste time,” was the sententious reply.
In a shorter period than Rudolph would have thought possible, they arrived at the corner of Mark Lane.
“You live somewhere about here,” said Stephen coolly, “but I don’t know where exactly. You’ll have to show me your door.”
“You seem to know a great deal about me,” answered Rudolph in an amused tone. “This is my door. Come in.”
Stephen followed him into the jeweller’s shop, where Countess sat waiting for customers, with the big white dog lying at her feet.
“I’m thankful to see, young man, that your ‘mother’ is no mother of yours. Your flaxen locks were never cut from those jet tresses. But I don’t know who you are—” he turned to her—“unless Ermine be right that Countess the Jewess took the boy. Is that it?”
“That is it,” she replied, flushing at the sound of her old name. “You are Stephen the Watchdog, if I mistake not? Yes, I am Countess—or rather, I was Countess, till I was baptised into the Christian faith. So Ermine is yet alive? I should like to see her. I would fain have her to come forward as my witness, when I deliver the boy unhurt to his father at the last day.”
“But how on earth did you do it?” broke out Stephen in amazement. “Why, you could scarcely have heard at Reading of what had happened,—I should have thought you could not possibly have heard, until long after all was over.”