His aunt hesitated, then said slowly, "Dear Archie, I am not sure whether it would be right to let you go. You are very young, and poor dear Mr. Wycherly——"
"Hoots, Miss Esperance," interrupted Elsa from the half-open door, where she had been listening in the most barefaced fashion, "just let the laddie gang: he is better suited to see after yon puir drucken body than you are yersel'!"
With that blessed reticence which characterises all honest and well-disposed boys, Archie asked no questions. The whole situation "jumped to the eye"; so, kissing his aunt, he seized his jaunty cap and was gone before Miss Esperance recovered from her wonder and indignation at Elsa's "meddling."
Archie walked smartly, keeping a sharp lookout to right and left till he reached the outskirts of the town: but he met nobody other than an occasional drover.
Presently he became aware of a little crowd which surrounded some one who was apparently sitting on the curbstone and singing.
The group of rough lads and fisher-girls joined derisively in the chorus of the song, marking the time by means of various missiles more calculated to soil than to injure their target.
With a sense of foreboding curiosity as the discordant "Fal-la-la, la, la la, la" smote upon his ears, Archie squeezed himself into the press under the arms of its taller members, and to his dismay discovered Mr. Wycherly—hatless, almost coatless, dirty and dishevelled—endeavouring to sing "Here's a Health Unto His Majesty" in very adverse circumstances.
Archie pushed through to his side, saying haughtily, "Don't you see that the gentleman is drunk? Be off, and let me take him home."
But the lads and lassies by no means saw it in that light, and in less time than it takes to write the sentence Archie was engaged single-handed in a free fight with all and sundry, and there seemed every likelihood of his getting decidedly the worst of it.
Fortune favours the brave, however, and a big collier lad, who had been the first to point out Mr. Wycherly's peculiarities of gait and costume to his companions, suddenly sided with Archie, and not only did he succeed in dispersing his quondam friends, but he fetched a "hackney coach" and lifted Mr. Wycherly bodily into it.