Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/52

40 up-gathered blue gown; the shimmery silk of her petticoat gleamed greenly. He was partly hidden by a derelict bicycle and a watering-can.

He hardly dared to draw breath.

Composedly she broke the twigs. Then like a flash she turned towards him.

"Who's there?" she said.

An inspiration came to him—and this, at least, was not flat or obvious. He writhed into the darkness behind a paraffin cask, slipped out of his fur coat, and plunged his hands in the dust of the coal.

"Don't be 'ard on a pore cove, mum," he mumbled, desperately rubbing the coal dust on to his face; "you wouldn't go for to turn a dawg out on a night like this, let alone a pore chap outer work!"

Even as he spoke he admired the courage of the girl. Alone, miles from any other house, she met a tramp in an outhouse as calmly as though he had been a fly in the butter.

"You've no business here, you know," she said briskly. "What did you come for?"

"Shelter, mum—I won't take nothing as don't belong to me—not so much as a lump of coal, mum, not if it was ever so!"