“But if she’s dying? I don’t want to see any one die.”
Miss Pynsent was bewildered, but her desperation helped. “If we go to her perhaps she won’t. Maybe we shall save her.”
He transferred his remarkable little eyes—eyes which always appeared to her to belong to a person older and stronger than herself—to her face; and then he put to her: “Why should I save such a creature if I don’t like her?”
“If she likes you, that will be enough.”
At this Miss Pynsent began to see that he was moved. “Will she like me very much?”
“More, much more, than any one—ever.”
“More than you, now?”
“Oh,” said Amanda quickly, “I mean more than she likes any one.”
Hyacinth had slipped his hands into the pockets of his scanty knickerbockers and, with his legs slightly apart, looked from his companion back to the immense dreary jail. A great deal, to her sense, depended on the moment. “Oh well,” he said at last, “I’ll just step in.”
“Deary, deary!” the dressmaker murmured to herself as they crossed the bare semicircle which separated the gateway from the unfrequented street. She exerted herself to pull the bell, which seemed to her terribly big and stiff, and while she waited again for the consequences of this effort the boy broke out abruptly: