“Ah! Youse a goil, an’ deyse born frightened. Bet youse life, if youse ask de doc, he won’t tink it nuttin’ to be scared of.”
“He isn’t here this morning,” remarked Constance, for some reason looking fixedly at the glove she was removing as she spoke.
The urchin raised his head and peered about. “Dat’s funny!” he exclaimed. “It’s de first time he oin’t bin here w’en youse wuz at de bat.”
“Has he seen you this morning?”
“Why, cert!”
The girl opened the dime novel and found the page at which the interruption had occurred, hesitated an instant, and remarked, “The next time he comes you might say that I would like to see him for a moment—to ask if I had better give you a pistol.” This said, she hastily began on the book. Thrillingly as the pursuits and pursuit of the criminal classes were pictured, however, there came several breaks in the reading; and had any keenly observant person been watching Miss Durant, he would have noticed that these pauses invariably happened whenever some one entered the ward.
It was made evident to her that she and Swot gave value to entirely different parts of her message to the doctor; for, no sooner did she reach the waif’s bedside the next morning than the invalid announced,—
“Say, Ise done my best to jolly de doc, but he stuck to it dat youse oughtn’t to guv me no pistol.”
“Didn’t you tell him what I asked you to say?” demanded Constance, anxiously.
“Soytenly. Ise says to ’im dat youse wanted to know wot he tought, an’ he went back on me. Ise didn’t tink he’d trun me down like dat!”