“No--no! Let me go!”
“You promise it?”
“Yes,” spluttered the man as soon as he could speak.
“I think that will be enough this time.” declared the triumphant Jack. “If I could get my hands on you, Fret Offut, I would give you a dose of the same medicine.”
“I ain’t done nothing!” cried the terrified youth. “Don’t you dare to touch me!” and by that time he had reached the door, to disappear an instant later.
Feeling that he had nothing more to fear from his enemies, Jack left the shop to go to his home, his mind soon occupied with thoughts of his South American voyage rather than with the more unpleasant memory of his recent trouble with young Offut and Furniss.
Before going direct to his home to tell the news there, Jack sought another home that he might first break the account of his good fortune to one whose fair countenance had been in his mind’s eye all the afternoon.
He knew the hardest part of his starting on his long voyage would be in tearing himself away from a certain blue-eyed damsel named Jenny Moodhead.
At her home he was met by the girl’s mother, who, in answer to his inquiries for Jenny, said:
“Jane is not here, and I do not see why you have not met her, as she said she was going to see you as you came from the shops. I am afraid something has happened to her.”