“What nonsense, officer! I could have crossed the road twice before the tram caught me.”
“But it’s my dooty to see you don’t come to any harm,” I answered; “and I wish I could see you run no worse risk than this. Is Mr. Rummles a-waiting for you on the other side?”
She turned them wonderful eyes of hers straight up to my face, and said,
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean as he ain’t no fit company for such as you, and I was very sorry to see him alongside of you.”
She wrenched her shoulder from under my hand, and turns upon me quite in a passion, with her black eyes blazing.
“How dare you say that of any friend of mine? It was Nick who introduced Mr. Rummles to me, and asked him to see me home, and he knows what is right for me to do far better than you. You exceed your duty, officer.”
And with that she darted away from me, all amongst the cabs and the trams and the omnibuses, and left me with oh! such a heavy heart to think I had offended her! And from that day she seemed to look quite gloomy at me, to what she had done before, and to join that scoundrel, Rummles, as often as she could. And I think the brute was gone on her, too, as well he might be, though I never see her give him any encouragement except as a friend.
Her whole heart seemed wrapped up in the young feller she called Nick, but the three was quite chummy together, and I’ve often watched them go arm-in-arm down the Mile End-road, laughing fit to split themselves with merriment.
One day our chief, Mr. Bostock, says to me, “Who’s that young chap as goes about so constantly with Rummles?”