“How do you know it isn’t?”
“Because I was in the tunnel this afternoon. You had been making so many foolish excuses that my curiosity was aroused. I took advantage of your absence at the other end of things and made Mr. Plegg take me. He didn’t want to; he was just as gruff and impossible as he dared to be to the big boss’s daughter. But I made him do it.”
It is easily conceivable that David felt cold chills racing up and down his spine at the bare thought of what might have happened during this unauthorized visit—this, be it remarked, though he fancied he had settled it definitely with himself that nothing was going to happen.
“That was altogether wrong!” he said, in his best workmanlike manner. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t break discipline that way?”
“Poof!” she retorted. “That is what Cumberleigh would call ‘putting on side’. It’s a pity if I have to ask permission when I wish to go somewhere—and of you!”
He shook his head in despair.
“You are not a bit less wilful than you used to be in the old Middleboro days. But, really, Vinnie, you mustn’t go into the tunnel again. It’s—it’s no place for visitors, or at least for women visitors.”
“You have a reason for saying that, and it isn’t any of those you’ve been giving me,” she flashed back.
“Do you think so?” He had not yet reached the point at which he could lie to her deliberately.
“I know it. You haven’t any scruples about letting me get mucky and grimy on any other part of the work; you have rather enjoyed telling me that my face needed washing.”