“Hadn’t we better telegraph to your people in Derbyshire?” suggested Jack Herring.
“Don’t do it,” vehemently protested the thoughtful Miss Bulstrode; “it might alarm them. The best plan is for you to lend me a couple of sovereigns and let me return home quietly.”
“You might be robbed again,” feared Jack Herring. “I’ll go down with you.”
“Perhaps he’ll turn up to-morrow,” thought Miss Bulstrode. “Expect he’s gone on a visit.”
“He ought not to have done it,” thought Jack Herring, “knowing you were coming.”
“Oh! he’s like that,” explained Miss Bulstrode.
“If I had a young and beautiful sister—” said Jack Herring.
“Oh! let’s talk of something else,” suggested Miss Bulstrode. “You make me tired.”
With Jack Herring, in particular, Johnny was beginning to lose patience. That “Miss Bulstrode’s” charms had evidently struck Jack Herring all of a heap, as the saying is, had in the beginning amused Master Johnny. Indeed—as in the seclusion of his bedchamber over the little grocer’s shop he told himself with bitter self-reproach—he had undoubtedly encouraged the man. From admiration Jack had rapidly passed to infatuation, from infatuation to apparent imbecility. Had Johnny’s mind been less intent upon his own troubles, he might have been suspicious. As it was, and after all that had happened, nothing now could astonish Johnny. “Thank Heaven,” murmured Johnny, as he blew out the light, “this Mrs. Postwhistle appears to be a reliable woman.”
Now, about the same time that Johnny’s head was falling thus upon his pillow, the Autolycus Club sat discussing plans for their next day’s entertainment.