"I would do a good deal to get the chance," he said.
"I should just love it!" she cried. "I shall come now," and she stepped light-heartedly into the gig, where the doctor joined her. Tommy, who had been in the background all this time, was about to jump up beside them, but McQueen waved him back, saying maliciously, "There's just room for two, my man, so I won't interfere with your walk."
Tommy, in danger of being left, very hot and stout and sulky, whimpered, "What have I done to anger you?"
"You were going with her, you blackguard," replied McQueen, not yet in full possession of the facts, for whether Tommy was or was not going with her no one can ever know.
"If I was," cried the injured boy, "it wasna because I wanted to go, it was because it wouldna have been respectable for her to go by hersel'."
The doctor had already started his shalt, but at these astonishing words he drew up sharply. "Say that again," ha said, as if thinking that his ears must have deceived him, and Tommy repeated his remark, wondering at its effect.
"And you tell me that you were going with her," the doctor repeated, "to make her enterprise more respectable?" and he looked from one to the other.
"Of course I was," replied Tommy, resenting his surprise at a thing so obvious; and "That's why I wanted him to come," chimed in Grizel.
Still McQueen's glance wandered from the boy to the girl and from the girl to the boy. "You are a pair!" he said at last, and he signed in silence to Tommy to mount the gig. But his manner had alarmed Grizel, ever watching herself lest she should stray into the ways of bad ones, and she asked anxiously, "There was nothing wrong in it, was there?"
"No," the doctor answered gravely, laying his hand on hers, "no, it was just sweet."