The other drew back with a gesture of disgust. “The Fleet!” he echoed.
“Aye,” said the bailiff, winking to the crowd; “the pretty jug for folk as spend more than they find in pocket; with a nice grating to see your friends so genteel like.”
Breaking from her father’s hand, the girl in the doorway ran out with fear in her blue eyes.
“Oh, where are you taking him?” she cried.
The fellow smirked. “I’m just going to show his honor to a hotel I know, till he has time to see his pal Dellevelly of Golden Square to borrow a tidy eighteen pound ten, which a bookseller not so far off will be precious glad to get.”
“Eighteen pounds!” gasped the youth, with a hysteric laugh. “Debtors’ prison for only eighteen pounds! But I have the books still—he can have them back.”
“After you’ve done with ’em, eh?” said the bailiff. “Oh, I know your young gentlemen’s ways. Come along.”
“Father!” cried the girl, indignantly, as the bailiff dropped a heavy grasp on the lamb’s-wool collar. “You’ll not let them take Shelley. You’ll wait for the money, father.”
“Go into the house!” thundered the old man. “He’s a good-for-nothing vagabond, I tell you!” He thrust her back, and the slammed door shut between her and the youth standing in the bailiff’s clutch, half-wonderingly and disdainfully, like a bright-eyed, restless fox amid sour grapes.
“Go to your room!” commanded her father, and the girl slowly obeyed, dashing away her tears, while the old bookseller went back to the cluttered shop and his reading of Livy’s Roman History.