“Hush! he’s going to open the door this time; he is indeed!”
“Never mind if he does; I won’t say anything,” whispered young Thorpe, his natural good nature prompting him to relieve Mrs. Peckover’s distress, the moment he became convinced that it was genuine.
“That’s a good chap! that’s a dear good chap!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, squeezing Zack’s hand in a fervor of unbounded gratitude.
The door of Mrs. Blyth’s room opened for the second time.
“He’s gone, sir; he’s gone at last!” cried Mrs. Peckover, shutting the house door on the parting guest with inhospitable rapidity, and locking it with elaborate care and extraordinary noise.
“I must manage to make it all safe with Master Zack tomorrow night; though I don’t believe I have said a single word I oughtn’t to say,” thought she, slowly ascending the stairs. “But Mr. Blyth makes such fusses, and works himself into such fidgets about the poor thing being traced and taken away from him (which is all stuff and nonsense), that he would go half distracted if he knew what I said just now to Master Zack. Not that it’s so much what I said to him, as what he made out somehow and said to me. But they’re so sharp, these young London chaps—they are so awful sharp!”
Here she stopped on the landing to recover her breath; then whispered to herself, as she went on and approached Mr. Blyth’s door:
“But one thing I’m determined on; little Mary shan’t have that Hair Bracelet!”
Even as Mrs. Peckover walked thinking all the way up-stairs, so did Zack walk wondering all the way home.