6
NOUGHTS AND CROSSES.
observed, we had started again. I pretended to stare out of the window, but marked the wet smear on his hand as he laid it on his lap.
In less than a minute it was my turn to alight. Unlike the matrimonial agent, I had not two half-crowns to spare; but, catching the sick woman's eye, forced up courage to nod and say—
"Good luck, my boy."
"Good day, sir."
A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar rolled east and west for miles. And at the back of it, as the woman had said, in street and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the foot-fall of a multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of children—of Whittingtons turning and turning again.
