“Avast there, woman!” cried the constable, heaving himself out of his chair. “I’ll sheer off to my bed and nowhere else, not for all the laws in the kingdom. Talk of buttons and nigger boys when all the world is afire! I’m dead-beat, I say, and I’ll turn in this minute.”
He lurched away into the bedroom and shut the door with a bang.
Susan looked at the door as if in a mind to follow her husband and drag him back. Then her face softened.
“Poor dear!” she said. “He’s that tired I never did see, and when a man’s tired let him be, that’s what I say. But that there Seymour!” Her lips shut tight. “Gollop can’t go, so I’ll go myself.”
“He won’t tell you anything,” said Martin.
“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But I’ll not rest till I know what he’s done with that poor shrimp of a blackamoor. And if he won’t tell, leastways I’ll show him the button, and ask whether he owns it, and I warrant I’ll tell by the look on his face whether he’s a villain or not.”
“I’ll go with you—light you upstairs,” said Martin, taking a candle from the table.
“Go to bed, Lucy,” said Susan. “You are over-late already.”
“I want to know about the Indian boy,” said Lucy.
“Now, don’t make me cross. Go to bed at once; you shall hear all about it in the morning.”