“If you will go in and take a seat,” said Peg, “I will send Ida to you immediately.”
She closed the door after him, and very softly slipped the bolt which had been placed on the outside. She then hastened downstairs, and finding the proprietor of the house, who was a little old man with a shrewd, twinkling eye, and a long aquiline nose, she said to this man, who was a leading spirit among the coiners into whose employ she and her husband had entered, “I want you to keep this lad in confinement, until I give you notice that it will be safe to let him go.”
“What has he done?” asked the old man.
“He is acquainted with a secret dangerous to both of us,” answered Peg, with intentional prevarication; for she knew that, if it were supposed that she only had an interest in Jack's detention, they would not take the trouble to keep him.
“Ha!” exclaimed the old man; “is that so? Then, I warrant me, he can't get out unless he has sharp claws.”
“Fairly trapped, my young bird,” thought Peg, as she hastened away; “I rather think that will put a stop to your troublesome interference for the present. You haven't lived quite long enough to be a match for old Peg. You'll find that out by and by. Ha, ha! won't your worthy uncle, the baker, be puzzled to know why you don't come home to-night?”
Meanwhile Jack, wholly unsuspicious that any trick had been played upon him, seated himself in a rocking-chair, waiting impatiently for the coming of Ida, whom he was resolved to carry back with him to New York if his persuasions could effect it.
Impelled by a natural curiosity he examined, attentively, the room in which he was seated. It was furnished moderately well; that is, as well as the sitting-room of a family in moderate circumstances. The floor was covered with a plain carpet. There was a sofa, a mirror, and several chairs covered with hair-cloth were standing stiffly at the windows. There were one or two engravings, of no great artistic excellence, hanging against the walls. On the centre-table were two or three books. Such was the room into which Jack had been introduced.
Jack waited patiently for twenty minutes. Then he began to grow impatient.
“Perhaps Ida is out,” thought our hero; “but, if she is, Mrs. Hardwick ought to come and let me know.”