Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/233

Rh so instinctively everything here, in this somewhat unknown territory, that I did not doubt her perfect familiarity with this kind of dispute—when there was a cry behind me, and the fair-haired mother, her child still in her arms, rushed past us like a whirlwind, pushed aside the outraged beadle, and fell, in a heap, baby and all, into the arms of the sailor.

What followed, happened in an instant. There was no pause, no further altercation with the door-keeper, who would probably have demurred to the whole highly irregular proceeding. The sailor gathered up the woman in his arms, lifted her impetuously over the step into the street and banged the little door behind them. A little assemblage of paupers had crowded into the covered passage to witness this drama; and then, in a flash, it was over, the door closed, and the beadle—he was a small lean man, in a jacket, nothing like the conventional Bumble—was left gasping behind.

We overtook the couple—the trio, to be more exact—at the corner of the street. The sailor was carrying the baby now, and the woman was fastening her bodice. The red sunset rays glinted on her hair and made it brightly golden; a shower was drying up, and the air was clear and fresh-smelling. The lime-blossom on a tree that overhung a garden fence—for we are rural, here in the Southern Suburb—was giving off the beginning of its evening fragrance. The street was deserted and quite silent. A scrap of talk floated to us down the hill from the man and woman in front.

"Only landed this morning," the man was saying. "Couldn't get no news of you off the old people; they wouldn't tell me nothing, and I bin lookin' everywheres for you, all day. Then I met yer sister, and shetold me; and I come round in a rush Rh