But Crosby would not budge. He begged, he implored, he became confused in trying to explain to her her danger, and at last burst into bitter tears as he felt Lally's fat, moist hand upon his collar, and saw a hereafter peopled with wrathful motherly faces in various stages of disgust and despair.
"You come vid me. I gif you to Riddle. He lock you oop, you bat boy!"
A suppressed giggle of pleasure, at the thought of neat little Crosby in the hands of the constable, shook Sissy, perched snugly like a malicious little bird in the tree. It served him right, she said to herself gleefully, ascribing the basest motives to Crosby, as one loves to do when one's friends are not in good standing with one's self. He had had no business to hang around and point the way to her hiding-place!
"Oh, I say, Jan, let me off!" begged Crosby, white with terror of the jail—and his lady mother. "I'll never peek again, sure I won't!"
"Nu! You come vid me. And you, too!"
Sissy looked down. Was it possible there was another laggard whom she had not seen?
"I say—you, too!" bellowed Lally. "Vill you come now?"
In the very certainty of security a sudden panic fell upon Sissy. If she only dared to move, to reassure herself! Of course it couldn't mean herself—oh!
She felt a sudden tug that almost dislodged her. "You t'ink I don't see—huh?" shouted the perspiring Teuton below. "What for you leave dis trail hang down den—hey?" And he tugged again.
With a sickly remnant of dignity Sissy stepped down and out. She had forgotten her train—the train that had been at once her pride and her undoing.