"I confess I don't. Tell me what you did mean."
She coloured slightly. "I meant did you think this is a fit place for me to stand still in?"
He became grave all at once and glanced hastily around. "No one of your acquaintance will see you here, if you mean that."
"Then I will stay," she answered with a little sigh. She had not dreaded any one seeing her. Jack was very dull, she thought.
He caught a look of disappointment on her face, and gathered from it that he had not answered her question as she expected. He added quickly: "They will not molest you, if that is your doubt."
She shook her head. "I cannot bear--it's very silly, I know--I cannot bear to hear people say dreadful things. Will that Negro swear, Jack?"
He laughed. "That Negro swear! Oh, dear no. The Lord Chamberlain would not license the piece if there were any bad language in it. Let us cross over, Dora, if you would really care to see. You may be sure he will use no bad language. He would not dare go half as far in that way as the writer of a comedy for a Quaker audience."
The two crossed and stood in front of Forbes's bakery, a few yards from the thin crowd around the Negro. The people noticing that the young girl and her companion were well dressed, fell back a little right and left to leave a clear view of the performer. The people did this not from servility or courtesy, but that the Negro might benefit by the contribution from the well-off strangers.
The Negro turned his face towards John Hanbury and Dora Ashton. He had beside him, on the ground, two cubes of stone, one the size of an iron half-hundredweight, the other somewhat bigger. In his hand he held a small square of thin board.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "like a great opera singer, I earn the bread I put into my mouth with the mouth I put it into. I have a lovely mouth," opening an enormous cavern and showing a magnificent set of teeth, the lower row of which projected half an inch beyond the upper.