He took the hand she held out, with something of admiration and respect.
"Well, you are a cool one!" he exclaimed. "I declare, you're cooler even than me! In a matter like this, where there's interest in one scale and feeling in the other, I think I can trust you as I would myself!"
She only nodded, resuming the occupation, from which she had turned for a moment, of drying her child's wet socks at the lately-kindled fire. Picard caught the boy in his arms and smothered him with kisses; then replacing him in his mother's lap, took his departure without another word.
"Where's he going?" said Gustave, making a plunge, to land barefooted on the floor.
"He's going away, dear," answered Jin, much pre-occupied, and scorching the socks against the bars of the grate. "And we're going away too. Don't you want to go away from this nasty room?"
"I want to go to Moley," answered the boy, in a sing-song that frequent repetition on the river had rendered mechanical. "And I want my tupper," he added, brightening up at so happy an afterthought.
But he couldn't eat his supper when it came; and now that his things were dry, Miss Ross was glad to hush him off to rest in her arms.
When he was sound asleep she rang the bell gently. "I am going out for an hour," said she to the waiter. "If anybody calls, say that tea is ordered to be ready when I come back."
Then she walked away in the pouring rain, and beckoned a flyman from the stand.
"Drive to The Lilies," she said in a loud voice. "Shut those glasses, and make haste."