“Geewhillikins! A nice scrape I nearly got you in, and myself as well. A pretty hole we should have been in if that fellow hadn’t turned up in the very nick of time. He’s the sort I call a friend in need with a vengeance.”
Emily struck in.
“Polly, why wouldn’t you let us sample his oysters and champagne? Considering he’s a friend of yours, you seemed pretty short with him.”
“My dear, he’s not a friend of mine, nor ever could be; and as for his oysters and champagne, they’d have choked me if I’d touched them.”
“They wouldn’t have choked me, I can tell you that. There is some romance in oysters and champagne, and, as you know very well, romance is what I live for. There’s precious little comes my way; it seems hard it should be snatched from my lips just as I have a chance of tasting it.”
“Hollo! Who on earth——”
It was from Tom the exclamation came. He stopped short, with his sentence uncompleted. I turned to see what had caused him to speak—to find myself face to face with the most singular-looking individual I had ever seen.
CHAPTER II.
LOCKED OUT.
At first I could not make out if it was a man or woman or what it was. But at last I decided that it was a man. I never saw such clothes. Whether it was the darkness, or his costume, or what it was, I cannot say, but he seemed to me to be surprisingly tall. And thin! And old! Nothing less than a walking skeleton he seemed to me, the cheekbones were starting through his skin which was shrivelled and yellow with age. He wore what looked to me, in that light, like a whole length piece of double width yellow canvas cloth. It was wrapped round and round him, as, I am told, it is round mummies. A fold was drawn up over his head, so as to make a kind of hood, and from under this his face looked out.
Fancy coming on such a figure, on a dark night, all of a sudden, and you can guess what my feelings were. I thought I should have dropped. I had to catch tight hold of Tom’s arm.