"A young, intelligent-looking girl. Yes. Who is she?"
"Young!" replied Lee, evasively, I thought. "Well, it's true she is young in years, but not in experience—in suffering, poor girl, as I can bear witness."
"There are, indeed, but faint indications of the mirth and lightness of youth or childhood in those timid, apprehensive eyes of hers."
"She never had a childhood. Girls of her condition seldom have. Her father's booked for the next world, and by an early stage, too, unless he mends his manners, and that I hardly see how he's to do. The girl's been to Lymington to see after a place. Can't have it. Her father's character is against her. Unfortunate; for she's a good girl."
"I am sorry for her. But come, to business. How about the matter you wot of?"
"Here are all the particulars," answered Lee, with an easy transition from a sentimental to a common-sense, business-like tone, and, at the same time, unscrewing the lid of a tortoise-shell tobacco-box, and taking a folded paper from it. "I keep these matters generally here; for if I were to drop such an article—just now, especially—I might as well be hung out to dry at once."
I glanced over the paper. "Place, date, hour correct, and thoroughly to be depended upon, you say, eh?"
"Correct as Cocker, I'll answer for it. It would be a spicy run for them, if there were no man-traps in the way."
I placed the paper in my waistcoat-pocket, and then handed the doctor his preliminary fee. The touch of gold had not its usual electrical effect upon him. His nervous fit was coming on again. "I wish," he puffed out—"I wish I was safe out of this part of the country, or else that a certain person I know was transported; then, indeed—"
"And who may that certain person be, doctor?" demanded a grim-looking rascal, as he softly opened the door. "Not me, I hope?"