“Beg your pardon,” he said, with a slight stammer as they approached each other, “you couldn’t tell me, could you, where one--Crockton or Croaker, or some such name, lives about here?”
“Croaker?” said Walter. With Crockford’s cottage before his eyes, what could be more simple? The suggestion was too evident to be mistaken, as was also the other suggestion, which came like a flash of lightning, and made his eyes shine with angry fire. “I know nobody of the name,” he said, quietly, making a rapid step forward; and then it occurred to him that the information thus sought might be supplied easily by any uninterested passer-by, and he paused, feeling that it was necessary to plant himself there on the defense. “What sort of a man do you want? What is he?” he asked.
“Ah, no sort of a man at all--it’s--it’s a cottage, I believe. He may be a cobbler or a plow-boy, or a--anything you please. Am I the sort of person to know such people’s trades? It’s a--it’s a--Look here, I’ll make it worth your while if you’ll help me. It’s a lady I want.”
“Oh, a lady!” said Walter. He felt the blood flush to his face; but this the inquirer, occupied with his own business, did not remark. He came close, turning off the smoke of his cigar with his hand.
“Look here,” he said, in a loud whisper, “I’ll make it worth your while. It’ll be as good as a suv--, well, I may say if you’ll really find out what I want, as good as a fiver in your pocket. Oh, I say, what’s the matter: I don’t mean no harm.”
“I wonder who you take me for,” cried Walter, whose sudden move forward had thrown the other back in mingled astonishment and alarm.
The stranger eyed him from head to foot with a puzzled look, which finally awoke a little amusement in Walter’s angry soul. “Don’t know you from Adam,” he said, “and I ain’t used to fellows in knickerbockers. Swells wear them, and gamekeepers wear them. If you’re a swell I beg your pardon, that’s all I can say.”
This prayer it pleased Walter graciously to grant. He began to enter into the humor of the situation. And then, to save her from some vulgar persecutor, was not that worth a little trouble? “Never mind,” he said, “who I am. I know all the ladies that live here. Which of them is it that you want?”