“Meestaire Honable Tonee, on my knees I pray to you, be more quiyet! Lissen, lissen, come more close. I tell you evairy thing. No, come more close. Do not let them see—do not, do not let them hear. Ah—ah—more sof’, more still! So!”
Out of the blackness the suppliant whisper drew him like a taut thread—nearer, nearer—he stumbled over something small and yielding, swore and laughed in the same quick breath, and felt two fluttering hands clutch at him, closing over his wrist in frantic protest.
“No, no, do not laff—hush, do not laff, I say.”
“Well, but what in hell?” inquired the Honourable Tony, softly enough to satisfy even his exigent audience. “No, I say, drop it, there’s a good little lunatic! I’m after the matches; they’re on this table somewhere——”
“Honable Tonee—lissen—eef one of those matches you should light, we die.”
“Oh, we do, do we? Well, death will be a blessed relief for one of us and a just retribution for the other. Why hasn’t someone killed you for using that simply frightful stuff long before this, Daisy?”
“What stuff ees that? Ah, ah, Honable Tonee, I am a-frighten to die; I am a-frighten!”
“But after all, that hardly alters the merits of the case, now does it? Though even death doesn’t seem to quite expiate the crime! Do you bathe in it?”
“But in what? Lissen—I tell you, lissen——”
“Lissen yourself, my child; it’s I who am going to tell you. Apparently you’ve had no guidance whatever so far, but precisely here is where you acquire a guardian angel. Daisy, little girls have been boiled in oil for less than using one drop of the noxious fluid in which you are drowning.”