He was shivering.  He did not seem to know that people were looking at him.  His voice was squeaky and broken.  He tugged at Robert’s sleeve.  “Oh, I say—­do come——­”

Robert looked ahead of him.  It meant losing his place.  Instead of being so close to her that he could smell the warm, sweet scent of her as she passed, he would have to peer between peopled heads, and she would be a far-off vision to him.  And yet, oddly enough, it did not occur to him to refuse.  He stood out, and they walked together towards the dark, huddled army of caravans beyond the tents.

“What is it?  What’s the row?”

“It’s Father—­he’s got wind of something—­Mother told me—­he’s going to open my money-box when he comes home to-night.  I didn’t know he’d kept count—­just the sort of beastly thing he would do—­and oh, Robert, when he finds out I’ve been cramming him he’ll kill me—­he will, really——­”

At another time Robert might have consoled him with the assurance that even the beastliest sort of father might hesitate to risk his neck on such slight provocation, but he himself was overwrought with three days of peril, of desperate subterfuge and feverish alternations between joy and anguish.  Now, in the mysterious twilight, the most terrible, as the most wonderful things seemed not merely possible but likely.  It made it all the more terrible that Rufus should have to endure so much because he had taken a fancy to a silly kid who laughed like a hyena till you laughed yourself, however much you hated her.

He held Cosgrave’s sticky hand tight, and at that loyal understanding pressure Cosgrave began to cry, shaking from head to foot, jerking out his words between his chattering teeth.

“It’s s-stupid to cry—­I do w-wish I w-wasn’t always c-crying about everything—­after all—­he c-can’t kill me more than once, can he?  But he’s such a beast.  He h-hates anyone else to h-have a good time and tell lies.  He’s always so j-jolly glad to let into me or mother—­and when he finds out we’ve been stuffing him he—­he goes mad—­and preaches for days and days.  Mother’s a brick.  She gave me a shilling to put back—­but he—­he keeps her short, and she has to tell about every penny.  She says she’ll have to pretend she lost it.  And it’s not enough, anyway.  Oh—­Robert, you don’t know what a row there’ll be.”

But Robert knew.  He felt the cruel familiar ruffling of the nerves.  He heard the thud of his father’s step, the horrible boom of his father’s voice, “You’re a born liar, Christine—­you’re making my son into a liar.”  It was as though Dr. Stonehouse had pushed off the earth that covered him and stood up.

It was awful that Rufus should be frightened too.  It wasn’t fair.  He wasn’t strong enough.

“I say—­we’ll have to do something.  How much did you take out?”

“’Bout three shillings—­there was an extra penny or two—­p’r’aps he wouldn’t notice that, though—­I thought p’r’aps—­oh, I don’t know what I thought—­but I had to come to tell you—­I hadn’t anyone else——­”