"Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this fellow a shilling not to go bothering Miss Middleton."
"The lady wouldn't have none o" the young gentleman, sir, and I offered to go pioneer for her to the station, behind her, at a respectful distance."
"As if!—you treacherous cur!" Crossjay ground his teeth at the betrayer. "Well, Mr. Whitford, and I didn't trust him, and I stuck to him, or he'd have been after her whining about his coat and stomach, and talking of his being a moral. He repeats that to everybody."
"She has gone to the station?" said Vernon.
Not a word on that subject was to be won from Crossjay.
"How long since?" Vernon partly addressed Mr. Tramp.
The latter became seized with shivers as he supplied the information that it might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. "But what's time to me, sir? If I had reglar meals, I should carry a clock in my inside. I got the rheumatics instead."
"Way there!" Vernon cried, and took the stile at a vault.
"That's what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in their beds warm," moaned the tramp. "They've no joints."
Vernon handed him a half-crown piece, for he had been of use for once.