Nell suddenly ceased struggling, and fixed her eyes upon Jem’s swollen and excited face, in which the veins were rising like knotted cords.
“What do you mean, my dear young man?” piped Miss Bostal, in the gentlest accents, her mild efforts to calm the excited monster appearing every moment more futile and inadequate.
“Oh, you know very well what I mean, or, leastways, Miss Claris does!” pursued Jem, in the same key, and with a swaggering confidence, which caused little Miss Bostal to recoil a few steps, as if before a physical attack. “And if you don’t, why you’ll know soon enough. I’m just a-goin’,” proceeded Jem, with sullen emphasis, “to have my pipe and my ’alf pint,” and he took his beloved clay out of his pocket as he spoke, “and then I’m just a-goin’ to walk over to The Bell, at Stroan, to ask if a certain gen’leman from Lon’on is in.”
And, without more ceremony, Jem turned his back on the ladies, and marching out of the room by the opposite end, through the back door, left them no alternative but to retire.
Nell was utterly disgusted, not only by the part she had been made to play in this unpleasant scene, but by her companion’s humble demeanor and Jem’s own rudeness. As for his threat of speaking to the detective, she seemed to be past caring whether he carried it into effect or not. She said nothing as they walked back to Shingle End; and Miss Bostal, perhaps conscious that she had humbled herself before this young ruffian a little more than was meet, was silent also.
When they reached the house, the elder lady gave a little sigh, and fell back upon her usual solace in times of anxiety.
“I think we shall both feel better,” she chirped, as she carefully opened the front door with her latch-key, “when we’ve had a cup of tea.”
It was about a couple of hours after the termination of the scene between Jem Stickels and the two ladies, and the clock of the tower of St. Martin’s at Stroan had just chimed a quarter past eight, when a small boy burst into the bar-parlor of the Bell Inn, and startled the company by the scared expression of his face. He had been running fast, and it was some moments before he could articulate. In the meantime the questions put to him were so many that the confusion of tongues delayed the lad’s announcement still further.
It was Hemming, the London detective, who finally drew the boy out of the curious group, and made them wait for him to speak.
With another scared look, the lad at last panted out: