There now! what do you think of that?"
"I don't believe it, my old darling."
"It's true enough, I can tell you. Not a hair of my head shall you have."
"Why not?"
"Never mind why. I've got my own reasons."
"Very well: if you come to that, I've got my reasons for giving the bracelet; and I mean to give it. If you won't let any of your hair be plaited up along with the rest, it's Madonna you will disappoint--not me."
Mrs. Peckover saw that she must change her tactics, or be defeated.
"Don't you be so dreadful obstinate, Master Zack, and I'll tell you the reason," she said in an altered tone, leading the way lower down into the passage. "I don't want you to give her a Hair Bracelet, because I believe it will bring ill-luck to her--there!"
Zack burst out laughing. "Do you call that a reason? Who ever heard of a Hair Bracelet being an unlucky gift?"
At this moment, the door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened.
"Anything wrong with the lock?" asked Valentine from above. He was rather surprised at the time that elapsed without his hearing the house-door shut.
"All quite right, sir," said Mrs. Peckover; adding in a whisper to Zack:--"Hush! don't say a word!"
"Don't let him keep you in the cold with his nonsense," said Valentine.
"My nonsense!--" began Zack, indignantly.
"He's going, sir," interrupted Mrs. Peckover. "I shall be upstairs in a moment."
"Come in, dear, pray! You're letting all the cold air into the room," exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Blyth.
The door of the room closed again.
"What are you driving at?" asked Zack, in extreme bewilderment.
"I only want you to give her some other present," said Mrs. Peckover, in her most persuasive tones. "You may think it all a whim of mine, if you like--I dare say I'm an old fool; but I don't want you to give her a Hair Bracelet."
"A whim of yours!!!" repeated Zack, with a look which made Mrs. Peckover's cheeks redden with rising indignation. "What! a woman at your time of life subject to whims! My darling Peckover, it won't do! My mind's made up to give her the Hair Bracelet. Nothing in the world can stop me--except, of course, Madonna's having a Hair Bracelet already, which I know she hasn't."
"Oh! you know that, do you, you mischievous Imp? Then, for once in a way, you just know wrong!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, losing her temper altogether.
"You don't mean to say so? How very remarkable, to think of her having a Hair Bracelet already, and of my not knowing it!--Mrs. Peckover," continued Zack, mimicking the tone and manner of his old clerical enemy, the Reverend Aaron Yollop, "what I am now about to say grieves me deeply; but I have a solemn duty to discharge, and in the conscientious performance of that duty, I now unhesitatingly express my conviction that the remark you have just made is--a flam."
"It isn't--Monkey!" returned Mrs. Peckover, her anger fairly boiling over, as she nodded her head vehemently in Zack's face.
Just then, Valentine's step became audible in the room above; first moving towards the door, then suddenly retreating from it, as if he had been called back.
"I hav'n't let out what I oughtn't, have I?" thought Mrs. Peckover; calming down directly, when she heard the movement upstairs.
"Oh, you stick to it, do you?" continued Zack. "It's rather odd, old lady, that Mrs. Blyth should have said nothing about this newly-discovered Hair Bracelet of yours while I was talking to her. But she doesn't know, of course: and Valentine doesn't know either, I suppose? By Jove! he's not gone to bed yet: I'll run back, and ask him if Madonna really has got a Hair Bracelet!"
"For God's sake don't!--don't say a word about it, or you'll get me into dreadful trouble!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, turning pale as she thought of possible consequences, and catching young Thorpe by the arm when he tried to pass her in the passage.
The step up stairs crossed the room again.
"Well, upon my life," cried Zack, "of all the extraordinary old women
"Hush! he's going to open the door this time; he is indeed!"
"Never mind if he does; I won't say anything," whispered young Thorpe, his natural good nature prompting him to relieve Mrs. Peckover's distress, the moment he became convinced that it was genuine.
"That's a good chap! that's a dear good chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, squeezing Zack's hand in a fervor of unbounded gratitude.
The door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened for the second time.
"He's gone, sir; he's gone at last!" cried Mrs. Peckover, shutting the house door on the parting guest with inhospitable rapidity, and locking it with elaborate care and extraordinary noise.
"I must manage to make it all safe with Master Zack tomorrow night; though I don't believe I have said a single word I oughtn't to say," thought she, slowly ascending the stairs. "But Mr. Blyth makes such fusses, and works himself into such fidgets about the poor thing being traced and taken away from him (which is all stuff and nonsense), that he would go half distracted if he knew what I said just now to Master Zack. Not that it's so much what I said to him, as what he made out somehow and said to me. But they're so sharp, these young London chaps--they are so awful sharp!"
Here she stopped on the landing to recover her breath; then whispered to herself, as she went on and approached Mr. Blyth's door:
"But one thing I'm determined on; little Mary shan't have that Hair Bracelet!"
* * * * *
Even as Mrs. Peckover walked thinking all the way up-stairs, so did Zack walk wondering all the way home.
What the deuce could these extraordinary remonstrances about his present to Madonna possibly mean? Was it not at least clear from Mrs. Peckover's terror when he talked of asking Blyth whether Madonna really had a Hair Bracelet, that she had told the truth after all? And was it not even plainer still that she had let out a secret in telling that truth, which Blyth must have ordered her to keep? Why keep it? Was this mysterious Hair Bracelet mixed up somehow with the grand secret about Madonna's past history, which Valentine had always kept from him and from everybody? Very likely it was--but why cudgel his brains about what didn't concern him? Was it not--considering the fact, previously forgotten, that he had but fifteen shillings and threepence of disposable money in the world--rather lucky than otherwise that Mrs. Peckover had taken it into her head to stop him from buying what he hadn't the means of paying for? What other present could he buy for Madonna that was pretty, and cheap enough to suit the present state of his pocket? Would she like a thimble? or an almanack? or a pair of cuffs? or a pot of bear's grease?
Here Zack suddenly paused in his mental interrogatories; for he had arrived within sight of his home in Baregrove Square.
A change passed over his handsome face: he frowned, and his color deepened as he looked up at the light in his father's window.
"I'll slip out again to-night, and see life," he muttered doggedly to himself, approaching the door.