“And I’d have given him a cheer too, if I’d been there,” said the clerk, flushing. “Why, if a fellow as calls himself a gentleman was to treat my sister like that, I’d half-kill him, law or no law.”
“And serve him right too,” was chorused.
Then the business of catching parcels began again; the indignant clerk continued his entering; a little more conversation went on in a desultory manner, and the guards and ticket-collector off duty walked home.
The station was disturbed by no more extraordinary incident that night. Trains went and trains came, till at last there was only one more for the neighbourhood of Scarlett’s home.
Doctor Scales was standing on the platform thinking, and in that confused state of mind that comes upon nearly every one who is in search of a person in the great wilderness of London, and has not the most remote idea of what would be the next best step to take. He was asking himself whether there was anything else that he could do. He had been to the police, given all the information that he could, and the telegraph had been set in motion. Then he had been told that nothing more could be done—that he must wait; and he was waiting, and thinking whether he ought to telegraph again to Scarlett; to take the last train due in a few minutes, and go down again; or stay in town, and see what the morrow brought forth.
“I’ll stay,” he said at last; and he turned to go, feeling weary and in that disgusted frame of mind that comes over a man who has been working hard mentally and bodily for days, and who then finds himself low-spirited and thoroughly vexed with everything he has done. It is a mental disease that only one thing will cure, and that is sleep. It was to find this rest that the doctor had turned, and was about to seek his chambers, when he came suddenly upon the object of his search—Fanny Cressy—closely veiled and hanging heavily upon the great arm of her stalwart brother.
“You here, Cressy?” cried the doctor excitedly.
“Yes, sir,” said the farmer fiercely. “Hev you got to say anything again it?”
“No, man, no! But you—you have found your sister.”
“I hev, sir,” said Cressy, more fiercely still. “Hev you got anything to say again that—or her?” he added slowly.