“Go back by the first and fleetest ship to turn Mrs. Dickson inside-out. He thinks she and Verena have played him a trick in letting him come over. How did you find the black baby?”
“Found nothing the matter with it,” growled Cole. “These young mothers are so fanciful!”
We left him standing against the gate, supposing that he had to go higher up. And what happened then, I can only tell you by hearsay.
Cole, propping his back against the spikes, turned his face up to the stars, as if he were taking counsel of them. Counsel he needed from somebody or something, for he was in a dilemma.
“Well, I’ll chance it,” he thought, when he had got pretty cold. “It seems the right thing to do.”
Walking briskly to Oxlip Grange, he asked to see Mr. Bazalgette; and after whispering a few words into that gentleman’s ear, brought him out to North Villa. “You stand behind me, so as not to be seen,” he directed, ringing the bell.
“I’m coming in again,” said he to Sarah Stone, when she pulled the door back about an inch. So she undid the chain; the doctor was privileged, and he slipped in, Mr. Bazalgette behind him. Sarah, the faithful, was for showing fight.
“It is all right,” said Cole. “Not yet, sir”—putting out his arm to bar Mr. Bazalgette’s passage. “You go in first, to your mistress, Sarah, and say that a gentleman is waiting to see her: just landed from the West Indies.”
But the commotion had attracted attention, and a young lady, not black, but charmingly white, appeared at the parlour-door, a black head behind her.
“George!” she shrieked. And the next moment flew into his arms, sobbing and crying, and kissing him. Cole decamped.