“The ‘record-breaker’ Earle?” Jack uttered. “My aunt, wouldn’t I!” He flushed suddenly. “Would he come, Miss Earle? You know you told us once he was jolly particular!”
“He is,” I said calmly. “Awfully particular. But he will come, if I ask him. And I should like to ask him.”
The original Members of the Band regarded each other with glowing eyes.
“Well!” said Jack at last, drawing a long breath. “We lost seven bob over those fireworks, Ju, but I reckon it was worth it, don’t you?”
“Rather!” agreed Judy.
CHAPTER X
I HEAR OF ROBBERS
MRS. McNAB kept to the Tower rooms all next day. Julia brought me a message early in the morning.
“She put her head out at me when I did be sweepin’ the landin’ outside her door. ‘Let you be tellin’ Miss Earle I’d like to see her up here,’ says she: ‘an’ I’ll be takin’ all me meals here to-day,’ she says. ‘The work is troublin’ me,’ she says. An’ I’d say from the look she had on her that something was afflictin’ her. Yerra, there’s a powerful lot of misery over writin’ books. I never did read a book if I could help it, but if ever I’m druv to it I’ll be pityin’ the poor soul that wrote it all the time. It’s a poor trade for the spirits.”
As soon as I was dressed I ran up the narrow stairway and tapped at the door. Mrs. McNab opened it immediately. She was very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.
“I have not slept much,” she said, in answer to my inquiries. Evidently she had not climbed the steep steps to her bedroom, for there were tumbled rugs and cushions on the big couch; but she was fully dressed, and her iron-grey shingled hair was as neat as usual. “I think it would be as well if I did not go down-stairs to-day.” But she laughed at my suggestion to call in the Wootong doctor.