He found an opportunity to exchange a few words with her before he left the King’s Arms, asking abruptly: “Shall I see you at the Colebatches’ ball?”
“Yes. I have been invited to go, and my kind mistress says I may—or, rather, insists that I must!”
“En chaperon?”
“No, she goes herself, so I am to enjoy a holiday.”
“Then I shan’t cry off from it.”
He did not wait for an answer, but with a smile, and a brief handshake, took his departure.
The next hour was spent very agreeably by the rest of the party in various shops, where not only was a reticule found, and the satin exactly matched, but where Tiffany bought a pair of filigree earrings, and Miss Trent a spray of artificial flowers to wear with her only ball-dress. Lindeth’s presence added a good deal of gaiety to the expedition. He took a keen interest in the various purchases, but as he knew very little about feminine fashions he made some wonderful blunders, which rapidly induced a mood of hilarity in his companions. He also discovered a pastrycook’s shop advertising ice-creams; and as the ladies were all feeling hot, and a trifle weary, he experienced no difficulty in persuading them to enter it. Tiffany, puffing off her knowledge, said that it was just like Gunter’s: an inaccurate statement, but one which showed her to be in her best humour. Miss Trent thought that she had seldom spent a more pleasant day in her company.
After disposing of several lemon-flavoured ices, they left the pastrycook’s, and began to retrace their steps to the King’s Arms. The street was a busy one, and there was no room to walk four abreast, so the two girls went ahead, amicably discussing the latest modes, and Lindeth civilly offered his arm to Miss Trent. A picture hanging in the window of a print-shop caught his eye; he recognized the subject, which was the Dripping Well, and at once drew Miss Trent’s attention to it. It was while they were studying it that the harmony of the day was suddenly and rudely shattered. Some kind of a stir was taking place further up the street; there were shouts of: “Stop thief!” and as they looked quickly round a ragged urchin came into view, darting towards them with an apple clutched in his hand, and an expression of hunted terror in his starting eyes. He was dodging between the passers-by, and had almost reached Patience and Tiffany when a middle-aged citizen thrust his walking-cane between his legs to arrest his progress. A crashing fall was the inevitable result: the child, swerving to avoid the over-zealous citizen, pitched forward, not on the flagway but on to the cobbled street. A cry of protest had burst from Patience; parcels, parasol, and purse were flung away; and under Miss Trent’s horrified eyes she sprang into the road, snatching the urchin almost from under the hooves of a high-stepping chestnut harnessed to a tilbury, which was being driven at a spanking pace along the street. For a dreadful moment it seemed as if she must be trampled upon; then the chestnut reared up, snorting, and was miraculously swung to one side; and the driver of the tilbury, a natty young gentleman clad in raiment which, almost as clearly as his handling of the reins, proclaimed him to be a top-sawyer, added his voice to the general hubbub in a furious expletive. The next instant Lindeth had brushed past Miss Trent, racing forward to the rescue, and unceremoniously pushing Tiffany out of the way as he bent over Patience.
“Good God, Miss Chartley—! Are you hurt?”
She had dragged rather than lifted the urchin out of danger, and was on her knees, supporting him in her arms, and gazing down in horror at his face, down which blood was streaming from a gash on the forehead, but she glanced up, saying: “Oh, no, no! But this poor little boy—! Something to stop the bleeding—a handkerchief—anything!— Oh, pray, one of you—!”
“Here, take mine!” Lindeth said, thrusting it into her hand. “Poor little devil! Knocked himself out!” He looked up at the driver of the tilbury, and said curtly: “I’m sorry, sir, and must thank you for acting so promptly. I trust your horse has suffered no injury.”
By this time the natty gentleman had realized that the female kneeling beside the gutter was a young and very pretty girl of obviously gentle birth. Blushing hotly, he stammered: “No, no, not the least in the world! Beg you’ll accept my apologies, ma’am! Agitation of the moment—forgot myself! By Jove, though! You might have been killed! Bravest thing I ever saw in my life! By Jove, it was!”
She looked up briefly, to say: “Oh, no! I am so much obliged to you! I don’t wonder you were angry—but, you see, I had to do it!”
Miss Trent, who had succeeded in pushing her way through the fast-gathering crowd, bent over her, asking anxiously: “How badly is he hurt, my dear?”
“I don’t know. His head struck the cobbles. I must take him to the hospital.”
“Yes, for I fear this cut must be stitched,” said Miss Trent, folding her own handkerchief into a neat pad, and pressing it over the wound. “Do you hold his head so that I can tie Lord Lindeth’s handkerchief round it!”
At this point, a fresh voice intruded upon them. The owner of the stolen apple, a stout and breathless shopkeeper, had arrived on the scene, and was loudly announcing his intention of summoning a constable to take the young varmint in charge. He was in a blustering rage, and somewhat roughly told Patience that the gaol was the place for hedge-birds, not the hospital. She said imploringly: “Pray don’t give him up to the constable! It was very wrong of him to steal from you, but you see what a little boy he is, and how wretched! And he’s badly hurt, too.”
“Not he!” retorted the shopkeeper. “Serve him right if he’d broke his neck! It’s a shame and a scandal the way him and his like hang about waiting for the chance to prig something! I’ll have this young thief made an example of, by God I will!”
“Here, you rascal, that’s no way to speak to a lady!” exclaimed the gentleman in the tilbury indignantly. “What’s more I’ll go bail the brat ain’t half as big a thief as you are! I know you shopkeepers! All the same: selling farthing-dips for a bull’s eye apiece!”
Not unnaturally, the effect of this intervention was far from happy. The injured tradesman appealed to the onlookers for support, and although one or two persons recommended him to pardon the thief, several others ranged themselves on his side. The air was rent with argument; but Lindeth, who had never before found himself in the centre of so embarrassing a scene, collected his wits and his dignity, and in a voice which held a remarkable degree of calm authority bade the shopkeeper declare the worth of the stolen fruit.