have nothing to do with
it. Keep out of my way, or at least learn to restrain your tongue. No
more, not a word more," said the young man, indignantly. He went off
with such a sweep and wind of anger and annoyance, that the slower and
older complainant had no chance to follow him. Elsworthy accordingly
went off to the shop, where his errand-boys were waiting for the
newspapers, and where Rosa lay up-stairs, weeping, in a dark room, where
her enraged aunt had shut her up. Mrs Elsworthy had shut up the poor
little pretty wretch, who might have been penitent under better
guidance, but who by this time had lost what sense of shame and wrong
her childish conscience was capable of in the stronger present sense of
injury and resentment and longing to escape; but the angry aunt, though
she could turn the key on poor Rosa's unfortunate little person, could
not shut in the piteous sobs which now and then sounded through and
through the house, and which converted all the errand-boys without
exception into indignant partisans of Rosa, and even moved the heart of
Peter Hayles, who could hear them at the back window where he was making
up Dr Marjoribanks's prescriptions. As the sense of injury waxed
stronger and stronger in Rosa's bosom, she availed herself, like any
other irrational, irresponsible creature, of such means of revenging
herself and annoying her keepers as occurred to her. "Nobody ever took
no care of me," sobbed Rosa. "I never had no father or mother. Oh, I
wish I was dead!--and nobody wouldn't care!" These utterances, it may be
imagined, went to the very heart of the errand-boys, who were collected
in a circle, plotting how to release Rosa, when Elsworthy, mortified and
furious, came back from his unsuccessful assault on the Curate. They
scattered like a covey of little birds before the angry man, who tossed
their papers at them, and then strode up the echoing stairs. "If you
don't hold your d----d tongue," said Elsworthy, knocking furiously at
Rosa's door, "I'll turn you to the door this instant, I will, by--."
Nobody in Carlingford had ever before heard an oath issue from the
respectable lips of the clerk of St Roque's. When he went down into the
shop again, the outcries sank into frightened moans. Not much wonder
that the entire neighbourhood became as indignant with Elsworthy as it
ever had been with the Perpetual Curate. The husband and wife took up
their positions in the shop after this, as far apart as was possibl