"Where is Miss Delaires?" asked Lewis, his face brightening.
"Doin' 'er mile," replied the coachman.
Lewis waved his hand toward a path to the right questioningly. The man nodded. Feeling suddenly young again, Lewis hurried along the path with a long and eager stride. He had not gone far when he saw a dainty figure, grotesquely accompanied by a ragamuffin, coming toward him. He did not have to ask himself twice if the dainty figure was Folly's. If he had been blind, the singing of the blood in his veins would have spelled her name.
He stepped behind a screening bush and waited to spring out at her. His eyes fastened curiously upon the ragamuffin. He could see that he was speaking to Folly, and that she was paying no regard to him. Presently Lewis could hear what he was saying:
"Aw, naow, lydy, give us a penny, won't cher?"
"I won't," replied Folly, sharply. "I said I wouldn't, and I won't. I'll give you up to the first officer we come to, though, if you don't clear."
"Ah, ga-am!" said the youth, whose head scarcely reached to Folly's waist. "Course you won't give me no penny. You ain't no lydy."
Folly stopped in her tracks. Her face went suddenly livid with rage.
"No lydy!" she cried in the most directly expressive of all idioms. "If
I wasn't a perfect lydy, I'd slap your blankety blank little blank."
At each word of the virile repartee of Cockneydom coming so incongruously from those soft lips, Lewis's heart went down and down in big, jolting bumps. Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he stepped out into the path. Folly looked up and saw him. The look of amazement in his face, eyes staring and mouth open and gulping, struck and held her for a second before she realized who it was that stood before her.