Such a tall, gaunt boy he had grown. His face was thin and sharp, there was a look of silent suffering in his eyes and round his lips, his clothes hung loosely on him, and were threadbare to the last degree.
"Get your hat and come with us, Master John," she said, a touch of her old sharpness in her manner to him. "Don't take on so, Miss Poppet. Hush! every one is looking at you; be quiet now, an we'll go to the Gardens, or somewhere where we can talk, and then we'll go home."
He wondered if those five terrible months behind him were a dream; or if little trembling Poppet, who was holding him so tightly, was a vision his disordered imagination had called up.
"Oh, I can't go home, of course," he said, and pushed his thick hair back in a tired kind of way. "Hush, Poppet; go home with Martha like a good girl, and, on no account, say you've seen me. Promise me----"
He did not wait for an answer, however, but made fresh confusion by fainting dead away on the floor at Martha's feet.
The manager of the restaurant felt himself a very ill-used man that such things should happen at his busiest time; but he was not inhuman, and the boy's deathly face and the little girl's exceeding distress touched him. Besides, Malcolm was his most regular customer; it would be unwise to offend him. So he helped to lift the boy into an inner room, gave Martha brandy and water, and recommended burnt feathers.
"I'll go and send a tellygrum for the Captain," Malcolm said, picking up his hat. He too felt ill-used, for there were some choice morsels still on his plate, and there was no knowing when he would get his pudding.
"Not father, on _any_ account," she said. "Esther, or Meg, or even Pip--but oh, not father!"
"No, you'd better not fetch the Captain," Martha said. "Oh no, he wouldn't do at all. Better telegraph for Miss Meg--she's got a head on her. The missus is ill with a headache, so it's no good fetching her--yes, send for Miss Meg."
It was between half-past one and two when all this happened; at five Bunty was half-sitting, half-lying on the old, springless sofa in the nursery. Poppet had squeezed herself on the half-inch of space he had left, and was gazing at him, a look of great content and unspeakable love on her little face; and Meg on the low rocking-chair beside them was holding a hand of each.