“I can’t help it,” said Jack, “I must go.”
“Eh? what’s that?” said Doubleday, who was near enough to hear this conversation; “who must go?”
“Smith has just heard that his sister’s ill,” I said, by way of explanation, and hoping to enlist the chief clerk’s sympathy, “and he must go to her, that’s all.”
“Hullo!” interposed Crow, “you don’t mean to say he’s got a sister. My eyes, what a caution! Fancy a female bull’s-eye, Wallop, eh?”
“So you may say,” said Wallop the cad, laughing. “I guess I wouldn’t fancy her, if she’s like brother Johnny.”
“And he’s got to go to her, poor dear thing, because she’s got a cold in her nose or something of the sort. Jolly excuse to get off work. I wish I’d got a sister to be ill too.”
“Never mind,” said Wallop; “if you’d been brought up in gaol you’d be subject to colds. It’s a rare draughty place is Newgate.”
No one but myself had noticed Jack during this brief conversation. His face, already pale and troubled, grew livid as the dialogue proceeded, and finally he could restrain himself no longer.
Dashing from his desk, he flew at Wallop like a young wolf, and before that facetious young gentleman knew where he was he was lying at full length on the floor, and Jack standing over him, trembling with fury from head to foot.
It was the work of an instant, and before more mischief could be done Doubleday had interposed.