“You come along,” he said.
“I haven't done anything,” said Lemuel, submitting, as he must, and in his surprise and terror losing the strength his wrath had given him. He could scarcely drag his feet over the pavement, and the policeman had almost to carry him at arm's length.
A crowd had gathered about them, and was following Lemuel and his captor, but they fell back when they reached the steps of the police-station, and Lemuel was pulled up alone, and pushed in at the door. He was pushed through another door, and found himself in a kind of office. A stout man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting behind a desk within a railing, and a large book lay open on the desk. This man, whose blue waistcoat with brass buttons marked him for some sort of officer, looked impersonally at Lemuel and then at the officer, while he chewed a quill toothpick, rolling it in his lips. “What have you got there?” he asked.
“Assaulting a girl down here, and grabbing her satchel,” said the officer who had arrested Lemuel, releasing his collar and going to the door, whence he called, “You come in here, lady,” and a young girl, her face red with weeping and her hair disordered, came back with him. She held a crumpled straw hat with the brim torn loose, and in spite of her disordered looks she was very pretty, with blue eyes flung very wide open, and rough brown hair, wavy and cut short, almost like a boy's. This Lemuel saw in the frightened glance they exchanged.
“This the fellow that assaulted you?” asked the man at the desk, nodding his head toward Lemuel, who tried to speak; but it was like a nightmare; he could not make any sound.
“There were three of them,” said the girl with hysterical volubility. “One of them pulled my hat down over my eyes and tore it, and one of them held me by the elbows behind, and they grabbed my satchel away that had a book in it that I had just got out of the library. I hadn't got it more than——”
“What name?” asked the man at the desk.
“A Young Man's Darling,” said the girl, after a bashful hesitation. Lemuel had read that book just before he left home; he had not thought it was much of a book.
“The captain wants to know your name,” said the officer in charge of Lemuel.
“Oh,” said the girl, with mortification. “Statira Dudley.”