Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/28

16 to come along, a man in a long black coat, reaching nearly to his heels, and a felt hat, which was crammed down so tight, that it almost covered his face as well as his head. I thought at first he was a beggar, or some object of the tramp kind, because he fell in at our side, and moved along with us, as some persistent beggars will do. But one glance at what could be seen of his features was sufficient to show that he was something more out of the common than that. He had a round face; almond-shaped eyes which looked out of narrow slits; a flat nose; a mouth which seemed to reach from ear to ear. There was no mistaking that this was a case of another ugly foreigner. The consciousness that he was near made me shudder; as he trudged along beside us I went uncomfortable all over.

“Go away! Make him go away!” I said to Tom.

Tom stood still.

“Now then, off you go! We’ve nothing for you. The sooner you try it off on somebody else, the less of your valuable time you’ll waste.”

Tom took him for a beggar. But he was wrong, and I was right; the man was not a beggar.

“Which is little lady?”

I don’t pretend that was exactly what he said. Thank goodness, I am English, and I know no language but my own, and that is quite enough for me, so it would be impossible for me to reproduce precisely a foreign person’s observations; but that is what he meant. Tom was angry.

“Little lady? What little lady? There’s no lady here, big or little, who has anything to do with you; so, now then, you just clear off.”

But the man did nothing of the kind. He hopped to Emily, and back again to me, peering at us both out of his narrow eyes.

“Which of you is Missee Blyth?”

“Miss Blyth! Is the whole world, all at once, on