Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/188

176 'Don't make a noise,' she said, 'or else you'll wake' The baby? I said. She had put on her dress.

She closed the door softly.

'What's the matter?' she asked. I was pleased by her quiet tone.

'Let's go upstairs,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'

We went up carefully; she first, stopping once to tell me to be quiet, or Miss Martin would hear. My fickle thoughts that had become rather pallid (the trouble of going up so carefully, that is so slowly, and the hitting of my head against some damned beam or something), brought me into the shadowy room in no cheerful state. Why had not she lit a light? She was groping on the mantelpiece for the matches now. She found them; struck a light; and then there we were in the yellow full glare of the gas for a moment, before she turned it lower. I had not anything to say ready.

At last:

'I am tired,' I said. 'Will you sit down? there'—(pointing to the foot of the bed), 'and I will sit here'—(at the head where the bed-clothes were drawn back). The child obeyed in silence. Although I did not look at her, I noticed her. Her hair was all disordered, and rather matted, her cheeks flushed with what I knew was a hot dry flush.

I put my hat on the chair by me—the old cane-bottomed chair I knew (the same as of old, save that the hole in its bottom was grown larger). Then I said (she looking at me in a strange way all the time): 'Rosy, I have come to make an offer to you. I have committed a crime here, in London, to-night. I must bolt out of England at once. I have scarcely any money left—in fact, just enough to get out of the place with. I want to know will you come with me?' I heard her breath go suddenly sharply inwards, and stop for a moment.

Looking at my booted toes shoving together on the carpet, I proceeded:

'I don't know what I'm going to do—supposing I am not caught, that is. But I dare say I shall be able