“Uncle a thief, eh?” proclaimed Crusty Sides, in a voice of such carrying power that to June it seemed that the Old Crocodile could hardly fail to hear him.
“Anyhow, this gentleman knows that it was I who brought the parcel,” she said, determinedly to Green Corduroy.
That young man looked her straight in the eye, and then declared that he did know. Further, like many minds “slow in the uptake,” when once in motion they are prone to deep conclusions. “Seems to me, Nobby,” he weightily affirmed, under the stimulus no doubt of being addressed as a gentleman, in the Company’s time, by such a good-looking girl, “that as this lady has got the parcel, and we have got the ticket for it, she and Uncle had better fight it out between ’em.”
“I don’t know about that,” growled Nobby.
Green Corduroy, however, stimulated by the fiery anguish of June’s glance, and no doubt still in thrall to the fact that she considered him a gentleman, was not to be moved from the statesmanlike attitude he had taken up. “You let ’em fight it out, Nobby. This lady was the one as brought it here.”
“I gave you a ten shilling note, didn’t I?” The voice of June was as honeyed as the state of her feelings would permit.
“Yes, and I fetched the change for you, didn’t I?”
Crusty Sides shook a head of confirmed misogyny. “Very irregular, that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
“Maybe it is, Nobby. But it’s nothing to do with you and me.”
Green Corduroy, with almost the air of a knight errant, took the all-important slip of paper from his colleague. Flaunting it in gallant fingers, he moved up slowly to the counter.