"I can walk there in an hour."
"You must have walked a part of the way from Elmwood."
"Please do not press me, Mr. McCausland."
He muttered something about "spunk" as he looked after the girl's slight figure retreating. Then he gallantly relieved Bertha of her foaming pitcher and sauntered with her back to the Arnold mansion.
When Emily reached the Hillsborough station she was indeed a footsore girl, fully convinced that country miles are as indefinite as nautical knots, but in the few moments she had to spare before the train came by she purchased a lunch of fruit, which refreshed her a little. Before they were well out of the station Inspector McCausland came up and asked permission to occupy the seat at her side.
During her walk Emily had come around to a gentler view of the detective's behavior. She could not look back on the afternoon's events without a certain complacency. For the true aspect of the case against Robert, as a grand chess duel between the criminal lawyer and the detective, was gradually dawning upon her, and surely in the discovery of Bertha's hiding-place and the unmasking of Bill Dobbs, white, her champion, had gained two positive advantages over black, the enemy's color. Besides, loyal as she was to her sweetheart, with that singleness of heart which we sometimes call womanly prejudice, there was a genial persistency in McCausland few could resist. So she forbore to fire upon his flag of truce and assented to the request.
They talked for the most part of irrelevant matters, and she herself did not like to broach the subject of all subjects. Only once did he appear to glance at his official relation to her.
"The fisherman, Miss Barlow, doesn't enjoy the death struggles of the mackerel in his nets," he said. "But he is obliged to see that they do not escape."
"Then you do disagreeable work from a sense of public duty?"
"And for the support of my family," he added. "But as we've arrived at the city perhaps I'd better return these now."