They laughed together.
‘It’s a miracle we’ve been able to meet,’ said Crewe. ‘I had to thrash a fellow five minutes ago, and was precious near getting run in. Shall we go the Tottenham Court Road way? Look out! You’d better hold on to my arm. These big crossings are like whirlpools; you might go round and round, and never get anywhere. Don’t be afraid; if any one runs up against you, I’ll knock him down.’
‘There wouldn’t be room for him to fall,’ said Nancy, wild with merriment, as they swayed amid the uproar. For the first time she understood how perilous such a crowd might be. A band of roisterers, linked arm in arm, were trying to break up the orderly march of thousands into a chaotic fight. The point for which Crewe made was unattainable; just in front of him a woman began shrieking hysterically; another fainted, and dropped into her neighbour’s arms.
‘Don’t get frightened!’
‘Not I! I like it. It’s good fun.’
‘You’re the right sort, you are. But we must get out of this. It’s worse than the pit-door on the first night of a pantomime. I must hold you up; don’t mind.’
His arm encircled her body, and for a moment now and then he carried rather than led her. They were safe at length, in the right part of Oxford Street, and moving with the stream.
‘I couldn’t find your brother,’ Crewe had leisure to say; ‘and I didn’t see Fanny French. There weren’t many people about just then, either. They must have gone off before I came.’
‘Yes, they must. It doesn’t matter.’
‘You have some life in you.’ He gazed at her admiringly. ‘You’re worth half a million of the girls that squeak and wobble when there’s a bit of rough play going on.’