"D'you mean," Jane-Anne demanded sternly, "that it doesn't make hair curl?"
"Not that I know of," gurgled the perjured boy; "it may," and relapsing into howls of mirth he buried his face in her pillow to stifle them.
Jane-Anne clasped her beery hands and wrung them. "And I've endured all this for nothing," she cried indignantly.
"And wasted a whole cask of beer," Edmund continued. "You left it running, and the cellar's flooded and you can smell us half-way down the street; there's quite a little crowd outside," he announced gleefully.
"I wish I was dead," she moaned.
"I'd have a bath if I were you, quick," said Edmund. "If you're safe in there, locked in, no one can get at you. Mrs. Dew and Montagu and Guardie are all at the cellar. Montagu's wading about in it, scooping it up, and I want to go too, only I thought it would be mean not to fetch you——"
"You can't be meaner than you've been already," she cried angrily. "Why did you tell me such a lie?"
"Nonsense like that isn't lies," Edmund answered, angry in his turn. "It's chaff. I never dreamt you'd be such a fool as to go and do it."
"Is it really no use?" she pleaded, still clinging fondly even yet to the hope that all might not have been in vain.
Edmund looked at her and began to laugh again.