Читать книгу The Joss: A Reversion онлайн

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“Go away! Make him go away!” I said to Tom.

Tom stood still.

“Now then, off you go! We’ve nothing for you. The sooner you try it off on somebody else, the less of your valuable time you’ll waste.”

Tom took him for a beggar. But he was wrong, and I was right; the man was not a beggar.

“Which is little lady?”

I don’t pretend that was exactly what he said. Thank goodness, I am English, and I know no language but my own, and that is quite enough for me, so it would be impossible for me to reproduce precisely a foreign person’s observations; but that is what he meant. Tom was angry.

“Little lady? What little lady? There’s no lady here, big or little, who has anything to do with you; so, now then, you just clear off.”

But the man did nothing of the kind. He hopped to Emily, and back again to me, peering at us both out of his narrow eyes.

“Which of you is Missee Blyth?”

“Miss Blyth! Is the whole world, all at once, on the look-out for Miss Blyth? What is the meaning of this little game? You, there, hook it!”