"You're no better than murderers, but
yer shan't have my poor babe to murder for a five-pound note."
"Take back them words, or else I'll do for yer; take them back," he said,
raising his fist.
"Help, help, murder!" Esther screamed. Before the brute could seize her
she had slipped past, but before she could scream again he had laid hold
of her. Esther thought her last moment had come.
"Let 'er go, let 'er go," cried Mrs. Spires, clinging on her husband's
arm. "We don't want the perlice in 'ere."
"Perlice! What do I care about the perlice? Let 'er pay what she owes."
"Never mind, Tom; it is only a trifle. Let her go. Now then, take yer
hook," she said, turning to Esther; "we don't want nothing to do with such
as you."
With a growl the man loosed his hold, and feeling herself free Esther
rushed through the open doorway. Her feet flew up the wooden steps and she
ran out of the street. So shaken were her nerves that the sight of some
men drinking in a public-house frightened her. She ran on again. There was
a cab-stand in the next street, and to avoid the cabmen and the loafers
she hastily crossed to the other side. Her heart beat violently, her
thoughts were in disorder, and she walked a long while before she realised
that she did not know where she was going. She stopped to ask the way, and
then remembered there was no place where she might go.
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