“How you startle a fellow! I thought it was Mad Nance come in to lay hands upon me.”
“She has laid hands upon enough for one day,” said Hamish. “Harper will dream of her to-night.”
“I thought Galloway would have gone into a fit, he laughed so,” cried Arthur. “As for my sides, they’ll ache for an hour.”
Roland Yorke’s lip curled with an angry expression. “My opinion agrees with Harper’s,” he said. “I think Mad Nance ought to be punished. We are none of us safe from her, if this is to be her game.”
“If you punish her to-day, she would do the same again to-morrow, were the fit to come over her,” rejoined Hamish. “It is not often she breaks out like this. The only thing is to steer clear of her.”
“Hamish has a fellow-feeling for Mad Nance,” mockingly spoke Roland Yorke.
“Yes, poor thing! for her story is a sad one. If the same grievous wrong were worked upon some of us, perhaps we might take to dancing for the benefit of the public. Talking of the public, Arthur,” continued Hamish, turning to his brother, “what became of you at dinner-time? The mother was for setting the town-crier to work.”
“I could not get home to-day. We have had double work to do, as Jenkins is away.”
Hamish tilted himself on to the edge of Mr. Jenkins’s desk, and took up the letter, apparently in absence of mind, which Mr. Galloway had left there, ready for the post. “Mr. Robert Galloway, Sea View Terrace, Ventnor, Isle of Wight,” he read aloud. “That must be Mr. Galloway’s cousin,” he remarked: “the one who has run through so much money.”
“Of course it is,” answered Roland Yorke. “Galloway pretty near keeps him: I know there’s a twenty-pound bank-note going to him in that letter. Catch me doing it if I were Galloway.”