The speaker was ragged and dirty, like everyone else in Green Ginger Land, and Emmeline was more than half-inclined to take her for an accomplice of Bully Ben’s, and to disregard the warning. She hesitated, equally unable to make up her mind to resign her watch, or to screw up her courage to plunge back into that terrible court, and as she wavered the children began to gather close again.
‘Just you run away,’ said the girl more urgently than before.
It is hard to say what would have happened if Emmeline had not just then felt something sting her cheek. It was only a piece of banana-peel, but such a yell of triumph rose from the spectators that she was seized with panic and fled headlong, pursued by the howling mob of children.
On and on she ran, still seeming to hear the shouts of her pursuers, till she had got far outside the borders of Green Ginger Land. Still she ran blindly on, till at last she was brought to a sudden standstill by bumping so violently against a fat old lady as almost to knock her down.
‘Well!’ ejaculated the old lady, as soon as she had regained her breath, ‘you _are_ a rude little girl!’
‘I’m—so—sorry,’ panted Emmeline: ‘some people—are chasing me—with stones.’
‘There’s nobody chasing you,’ said the old lady severely, and when Emmeline looked round she saw that it was the truth. The Green Ginger children had all straggled back to their own land before this.
‘It’s just one of those rude games you children are always playing about the streets,’ grumbled the old lady. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what girls are coming to.’
Poor Emmeline! She had never in her life before been suspected of playing rude games in the streets, but she had not the heart to defend herself, so she walked on without another word. As she walked, the thought of her lost watch—that dear little watch which had been her mother’s very last gift—came back to her like a stab, and made her eyes fill with tears till everything became blurred, and she stumbled along not seeing where she was going.
But she was a plucky little soul at the bottom, not given to crying over spilt milk when there were more urgent things to be done, so, as her handkerchief had got lost in the course of her adventures, she wiped her eyes on the back of her glove.