"If ever we do, Bunny!" said he, as I took his hand and told him
how I was already looking forward to the time.
"But of course we will!" I cried, concealing the resentment at
leaving him which his tone and his appearance renewed in my
breast.
"I'm not so sure of it," he said, gloomily. "I'm in somebody's
clutches, and I've got to get out of them first."
"I'll sit tight until you do."
"Well," he said, "if you don't see me in ten days you never
will."
"Only ten days?" I echoed. "That's nothing at all."
"A lot may happen in ten days," replied Raffles, in the same
depressing tone, so very depressing in him; and with that he held
out his hand a second time, and dropped mine suddenly after as
sudden a pressure for farewell.
I left the flat in considerable dejection after all, unable to
decide whether Raffles was really ill, or only worried as I knew
him to be. And at the foot of the stairs the author of my
dismissal, that confounded Theobald, flung open his door and
waylaid me.
"Are you going?" he demanded.
The traps in my hands proclaimed that I was, but I dropped them
at his feet to have it out with him then and there.
"Yes," I answered fiercely, "thanks to you!"
"Well, my good fellow," he said, his full-blooded face lightening
and softening at the same time, as though a load were off his
mind, "it's no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet,
but you never were a nurse, and you know that as well as I do.
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