He did not even attempt to follow her, but watched her flight, with a chuckle of amusement.
“Scared her well, that time, the little vagrant. Well, it’s right a lesson was given ’em. If every child who wanted to smell the bushes was let, what would our parks look like!”
“Like bits of Paradise, as they should;” answered a voice behind him, so suddenly that the policeman wheeled about to find himself face to face with a resident of the Place himself.
As for Mary Jane she neither saw whither she fled nor scarcely breathed before she had collided with a swiftly advancing figure, and found both herself and it thrown down. Captured after all! Her eyes closed with a snap, as there seemed to rise before them the vision of a station house, filled with frowning policemen, and herself in the midst, a helpless prisoner.
CHAPTER VII
ON THE WAY HOME
“Well, upon my word!”
Mary Jane opened her eyes. Then she rubbed them to see more clearly. Indeed, she rubbed them twice before she made out her mistake and was able to say:
“Oh! I am so sorry! I—I didn’t mean—but I can’t be arrested! I can’t—my mother—I—.”
She scrambled up somehow, picked her crutches from the ground and set off again. She dared not look behind her but was quite sure that the hard-faced policeman was in full pursuit. Off she was, indeed, only to be brought to a sudden stop, while a shiver of fear ran through her. But she made no further outcry and rested quietly upon her wooden feet, to hear her doom.
“Why, you poor little girl! You look scared. You haven’t done any harm, not a bit. In fact, you’ve saved me quite a chase. I’m not so swift as you are, hard as I tried to catch you.”