“Silence! silence, mon ange! von leetel minoot more, and you sall be mine for nevare!” he said in her ear, as he lifted her in his arms, and proceeded to carry her down the stairs.
In the passage, to the great discomfort of himself and the alarm of the girl, stood Miss Wewitz beside the door, determined to see the Frenchmen safe off the premises. Placing the girl carefully in the corner of the hall, with her face turned towards the wall, he whispered in her ear, “Courage! courage! ma souris;” and then requested to speak a word with the schoolmistress in the music-room, so that he might there occupy her with some little matter, while he returned and placed the trembling girl in the cab.
The men no sooner perceived that the figure was in the passage, than they began arranging which was the best place to stow it in the cab; whereupon the half-dead Chutney was doomed once more to hear the driver and his companion discuss the most effectual plan of removing her from the premises.
The cabman was for laying her at full length on the roof of his vehicle, and lashing her down with the cord, so that, as he said, “there wouldn’t be no chance of the thing’s rolling off.”
The “buck,” however, hinted that, in going over the stones, “some of her j’ints might get broke, so he was for tying her up on the board behind the cab; but this proposal was quickly overruled by the cabman, who observed that “that there would never do, for them boys would be sartin to get pelting the thing with stones and mud on the road, and a pretty pickle it would be in by the time they got to town. No! no! he was for shoving the old gal right across the foot-board; she could lay there very heasy under their feet; and where was the hodds, if so be as her legs did stick out a little bit; there wouldn’t be no danger of their getting broke off, with them right under his hi.”
The last proposition being considered quite unobjectionable by the cabman’s companion, Miss Chutney heard the heavy boots of the men moving across the passage towards the corner in which she stood. She made up her mind to give a good shriek immediately the fellows laid hands upon her again, and, indeed, had just got her mouth wide open, ready to utter one of her most piercing, when, to her unbounded delight, she caught the voice of the Count de Sanschemise at the end of the passage, shouting—
“Ne la touchez pas! Toosh it not! toosh it not!”
Hurrying towards the girl, the Frenchman seized her in his arms and carried her to the cab;—there he pretended to adjust the joints of the imaginary figure, much to the delight of the cabmen, so that it might be made to assume a sitting posture, and occupy the cushion beside him in the interior of the vehicle.
He had but barely completed the pretended adjustment, when Miss Wewitz emerged from the music-room, bearing the receipt in quittance of all claims upon the Count de Sanschemise, which that gentleman, as a means of keeping her out of the way for a few minutes, had requested her to write for him.
The Count hastened back to the schoolmistress, thanking her for her kindness, raised his Spanish hat from his head, and then, making her a profound bow, he saluted her with the greatest possible respect, and jumped into the cab, with his leathern reticule of a portmanteau in his hand.