The young man recognized Nip instantly, and his yawn of awakening changed into a gasp, and his somnolent pulse into a precipitate beat. The animal’s leap was indeed sudden enough to startle the strongest heart. Will turned his head instinctively towards the door—oblivious even of his damped trousers—but there was no sign of Nip’s mistress. Still, whether she was in the vicinity or not, the dog was clearly out of place. Grasping his pretext of escape firmly by the collar and clasping his struggling opportunity to his breast, he stole from the meeting-house.
III
He expected to see Nip’s owner outside. In his reading of the situation she had arrived so late that while she was hesitating whether to come in, the shameless dog had burst through the door, attracted doubtless by the aroma of all those dinner-packets, and this had made her still more ashamed to enter. But the quaint little street was bare of Jinny. So sunless did it appear without her, that he scarcely noticed that the sky was actually overcast again, and that the black cloud had regathered. He stood still, hesitating; in which relaxed mood of his the spasmodic struggles of the animal were successful, and Will became painfully aware that he was alone with his moist trousers and his London coat snowed over with little hairs, while Nip, after some preliminary gambollings and barkings at the recovery of the liberty he had himself abandoned, was vanishing into the High Street. So assured were Nip’s movements that Will divined at once he had only to follow him to restore him to his mistress, and without waiting even to brush off the little white hairs, he darted towards the street corner, and was happily just in time to see the excellent creature trotting into the courtyard of “The Black Sheep.”
His pleasure was not, however, free from surprise. What was Jinny doing at her business headquarters on the Lord’s Day? Or had she come in her cart to chapel, and put it up there? He ran towards the picturesque stable-yard. There were a good many chaises, gigs, dog-carts and even carriages standing—the countryside drove to its churches—but there was no trace of either Jinny or Methusalem, while Nip was standing with hang-dog air by the doorstep, under a poster of “Duke’s Marionettes.” But as Will drew nearer, he turned tail, sauntered down the passage, surveyed the painted hand, and then with an air of decision bounded up the stairs. Ah, she would be in the parlour! And Nip’s follower bounded upstairs too, keeping closely to heel. But no! Nip was not on dining bent, though the door was open. Rejecting all the appetizing scents that already emanated from the eating-room, Nip pit-patted along the dusky corridor and began whining and scrabbling outside a closed and numbered door. Very soon it receded before his pleadings; and as he scampered in, “You poor dog!” came out in the girlish voice that had so lacerated him with “Fol de rols!” But not the worst of that musical torment could vie with the jar to his heart-strings when, through the reclosing door, came another unforgettable voice with the jovial interrogatory: “Well, Nip, and what was the parson’s text?”
He remembered now—with a cold sick horror—that this was the very bedroom from which indignant housemaids had excluded its tenant—yes, there was Reynard opposite with his glassy eye and his erected brush. Possibly Tony Flip was not even up. That was what came of minxes driving Methusalems! Instead of being at divine service, like all God-fearing humanity, she was coquetting—or worse—with a mountebank in an inn bedroom. Yet he felt he must not spy upon her—any moment, too, she might come out—and he hurried downstairs and stood on the step under the ironwork lamp, louring like the great black cloud, which he now perceived to be in heaven-sent harmony with his mood. And that drivelling patriarch had foamed at the mouth when he had hinted that woman’s place was not a cart!
But Jinny did not keep him more than five endless minutes.
“Hullo, Will,” she cried gaily, as she tripped from the passageway with Nip in her arms. “What are you doing here?”
How the broad frame of her bonnet set off the picture of her face! Small wonder a loose-living showman found it bewitching. Not so William Flynt—with his high ideals of womanhood! Even to be called “Will” was provoking rather than flattering: he felt it now less the perquisite of the old friend than the proof of an indiscriminating levity.
“I’ve come for the dinner,” he said coldly. Nip gazed straight at him with his mild brown eye, but although Will did not suppose that the brute would open its mouth like Balaam’s ass and give him away, he could not look it in the head. He turned his shoulder on dog and damsel and stared at the poster.
“I wish I could have dinner with you,” replied Jinny frankly. “But I must be off to feed Gran’fer. Farmer Gale’s trap should be here by now.”