“Ay. T’ wife telt me she was here.”
The explanation served, and Martin breathed more freely. The reading commenced:
“Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
“Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.”
Martin, with his mind in a tumult on account of the threatened escapade, did not care a pin what method was adopted to restore the feeble circulation of the withered King so long as the lesson passed off satisfactorily.
With rare self-control, he bent over the, to him, unmeaning page, and acquitted himself so well in the parrot repetition which he knew would be pleasing that he ventured to say:
“May I stay out a little later to-night, sir?”
“What for? You’re better i’ bed than gapin’ at shows an’ listenin’ te drunken men.”
“I only ask because—because I’m told that Mrs. Saumarez’s little girl means to see the fair by night, and she—er—would like me to be with her.”
John Bolland laughed dryly.