"Then," said the guard pointedly, "if I was the public, I should put my hands in my pocket, and not go fishing about for ambiguous property in corners. There!—what did I tell you? Now you'll say that was me, I suppose?"
The thing that hadn't been the guard was a sudden crackle that leaped out in a blue flame under the seat where the man's hand was exploring for the half-crown. It was either that, or another like it, at the man's heel. Or both together. A little boy was intensely delighted, and wanted more of the same sort. The elderly gentleman turned purple with indignation, and would at once complain to the authorities. They would take the matter up, he doubted not. It was a disgrace, etc., etc., etc.
Rosalind, or Sally, Nightingale showed no alarm. Her merry eyebrows were as merry as ever, and her smile was as unconscious a frame to her pearly teeth as ever, when she turned to the mother of the delighted little boy and spoke.
"There now! It's exactly like that when I comb my hair in very dry weather." And the good woman was able to confirm this from her own experience, narrating (with needless details) the strange phenomena attendant on the head of a young person in quite a good situation at Woollamses, and really almost a lady, stating several times what she had said to the young person, Miss Ada Taylor, and what answer she had received. She treated the matter entirely with reference to the bearings of the electric current on questions of social status.
But the man did not move, remaining always with his arm under the seat. Rosalind, or Sally, thought he had run the half-crown home, but in some fixed corner from which detachment was for a moment difficult. Wondering why the moment should last so long, she spoke.
"Have you got it?" said she.
But the man spoke never a word, and remained quite still.