"You've exceeded it in this case, I think you'll find," the master of the house replied severely. "Step downstairs if you please, and then I'll hear what you've got to say," and to Ferdy's inexpressible relief, for the consciousness of Jesse's near presence was beginning to make him terribly nervous.
Mr. Ross held the door wide open and the constable shamefacedly left the room. Scarcely had he done so when there came a subterranean whisper, "Master Ferdy," it said, "shall I come out?"
"No, no," Ferdy replied quickly. "Stay where you are, Jesse, unless you're choking. Mamma will be coming in most likely. Wait till papa comes back again, and I can tell him all about it."
Rather to Ferdy's surprise, the answer was a sort of giggle.
"I'm all right, thank you, Master Ferdy—as jolly as a sand-boy. And you did speak up to the old bobby, Master Ferdy; you did set him down. But I'm right down glad Bill Turner's none the worse, I am. It give me a turn when they called out I'd done for him."
And Ferdy understood then that the giggle came in part from relief of mind.
"Hush now, Jesse," he said. "I want to watch for Brownrigg's going. And till he's clear away, you'd best not come out, nor speak."
There was not very long to wait. For though Mr. Ross spoke out his mind very plainly to the constable, he made short work of it, and within ten minutes of the man leaving the oriel room, Ferdy had the pleasure, as he announced to Jesse in a sort of stage whisper, of seeing the worthy Mr. Brownrigg walking down the drive, some degrees less pompously than on his arrival. Nor was he now accompanied by poor little Barney, whom Mr. Ross had kept back, struck by pity for the lad's white, frightened face, as the constable could not say that there was any "charge" against him, except that he had been an eye-witness of the "row."
"It's all right now, Jesse," Ferdy added in a minute or two. "He's quite gone—old Brownrigg, I mean—so you'd better come out."
Jesse emerged from his hiding-place, a good deal redder in the face than when he went in, though he was still trembling inwardly at the idea of meeting Ferdy's father.