Dangle

“ Her voice broke a little, she moved towards the door, and young Phipps, who was a youth of action rather than of words, sprang and opened it—proud to be first.
"She is sorely troubled," said Dangle to Widgery.
"We must do what we can for her."
"She is a wonderful woman," said Dangle. "So subtle, so intricate, so many faceted. She feels this deeply." ”

“ Milton and Dangle came round the corner from the station. "It's her!" said Mrs. Milton, and would have screamed. "Hist!" said Dangle, gripping the lady's arm, removing his handkerchief in his excitement, and leaving the piece of meat over his eye, an extraordinary appearance which seemed unexpectedly to calm her. "Be cool!" said Dangle, glaring under the meat. "They must not see us. They will get away else. Were there flys at the station?" The young couple mounted and vanished round the corner of the Winchester road. ”

“ Hoopdriver struggled for equilibrium with the umbrella-stand, Dangle and Phipps, roused from their inertia by Miss Mergle's activity, came in upon her heels, Phipps leading. "How dare you prevent that lady passing?" said Phipps.
Mr. Hoopdriver looked obstinate, and, to Dangle's sense, dangerous, but he made no answer. A waiter in full bloom appeared at the end of the passage, guardant. "It is men of your stamp, sir," said Phipps, "who discredit manhood." ”

“ For Rollitt was the fellow who had publicly insulted the Moderns in the person of Dangle; and not only that, but—poor and shabby as he was—had shown himself utterly indifferent to their indignation and contemptuous of their threats.
“Why,” Dangle said, “the fellow’s a pauper! he can’t even pay for his clubs! His father’s a common fellow, I’m told.”
“Yes, and I heard,” said Brinkman, “his fees up here are paid for him. Why, we might just as well have Bob in the fifteen.”
“A jolly sight better. Bob knows how to be civil.”
“It is a crime to be poor,” said Fullerton. ”

“ Why had Dangle put up at the Carillon? The hotels near the station were the obvious ones for English visitors. Could it be because the Place Verte was close to the river and the shipping? This, French admitted to himself, sounded farfetched, and yet it might be the truth.
3. The dispersal and disappearance of the gang immediately on the probability of its activities becoming known to the police looked suspiciously like a flight.
4. Could it be that Dangle’s arrival in Antwerp was ahead of schedule, that is, the flight brought him there two days before the expedition was to start? ”

“ A broad, ugly road ran downhill in a long vista, and in the distance was a little group of Botley inhabitants holding the big, black horse. Even at that distance they could see the expression of conscious pride on the monster's visage. It was as wooden-faced a horse as you can imagine. The beasts in the Tower of London, on which the men in armour are perched, are the only horses I have ever seen at all like it. However, we are not concerned now with the horse, but with Dangle. "Hurt?" asked Phipps, eagerly, leading.
"Mr. Dangle!" cried Mrs. Milton, clasping her hands. ”

“ Hoopdriver, fiercely.
“Who are YOU, sir?” retorted Phipps. “Who are you? That’s the question. What are YOU, and what are you doing, wandering at large with a young lady under age?”
“Don’t speak to him,” said Dangle.
“I’m not a-going to tell all my secrets to any one who comes at me,” said Hoopdriver. “Not Likely.” And added fiercely, “And that I tell you, sir.”
He and Phipps stood, legs apart and both looking exceedingly fierce at one another, and Heaven alone knows what might not have happened, if the long clergyman had not appeared in the doorway, heated but deliberate. ”

“ We do.”
“You!” retorted Yorke, with such withering contempt that Dangle half wished he had left the matter alone.
“The thing is,” said Ranger, “what is to be done!”
“Nothing,” said Yorke. “Forder has gone to tell the doctor all about it. They’ll take it into their own hands to hunt him down—perhaps with Dangle’s assistance. All we’ve got to do is—”
Here Fullerton interrupted—
”—is to say all the evil we can about a fellow who is down and can’t defend himself.”
“What’s the matter with Fullerton?” said Clapperton, with a sneer; “surely he’s not become one of Rollitt’s champions?” ”

“ Dangle shouted after him. "Put out your foot, man," said Dangle.
In this way the tandem riders were carried a good hundred yards or more beyond their quarry. Then Phipps realised his possibilities, slacked up with the brake, and let the thing go over sideways, dropping on to his right foot. With his left leg still over the saddle, and still holding the handles, he looked over his shoulder and began addressing uncomplimentary remarks to Dangle. "You only think of yourself," said Phipps, with a florid face.
"They have forgotten us," said Jessie, turning her machine. ”

“ Milton's Lotion while I try to gain a footing in Literature."
"Try!" said Phipps. "You have done so." And, "That's different," said Dangle, at the same time.
"You are so kind to me. But in this matter. Of course Georgina Griffiths in my book lived alone in a flat in Paris and went to life classes and had men visitors, but then she was over twenty-one."
"Jessica is only seventeen, and girlish for that," said Dangle.
"It alters everything. That child! It is different with a woman. And Georgina Griffiths never flaunted her freedom—on a bicycle, in country places. In this country. ”

“ Dangle?"
"He will simply go on until he has to pass something, and then he will break his neck. I have seen Dangle drive before. It's scarcely likely a dog-cart, especially a hired dog-cart, will overtake bicycles in the cool of the evening. Rely upon me, Mrs. Milton—"
"I am in your hands," she said, with pathetic littleness, looking up at him, and for the moment he forgot the exasperation of the day.
Phipps, during this conversation, had stood in a somewhat depressed attitude, leaning on his stick, feeling his collar, and looking from one speaker to the other. ”

“ But the worst shadow, that a Fellsgarth boy was a thief, is happily removed, and I wish every boy in this house to hear of it at the earliest possible moment.”
And the doctor went, leaving Clapperton to gulp down the bitter pill as best he could.
Why should he have the job to do? He had not been the first to start the suspicions. Dangle had done that—Dangle, with whom he had fought. Why should not Dangle be called upon to put it right? Unluckily, Dangle was not the captain of Forder’s. He was not as responsible in starting the rumour as Clapperton, in his position, had been in adopting it. ”

“ I shall be happy to see any three of you, whenever you like, I can hit out as well as young Corder, so I hope Brinkman won’t come. But Dangle now, or even Clapperton, I shall be charmed to see. It’s really their duty as prefects to suppress any one who dares have an opinion of his own. ”

“ Milton’s simple but becoming grey dress, with the healthy Widgery’s Norfolk jacket and thick boots, with the slender Dangle’s energetic bearing, nor with the wonderful chequerings that set off the legs of the golf-suited Phipps. They are after us. In a little while they will be upon us. You must imagine as you best can the competitive raidings at Midhurst of Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps. How Widgery was great at questions, and Dangle good at inference, and Phipps so conspicuously inferior in everything that he felt it, and sulked with Mrs. ”

“ I promise you, nothing shall be omitted for your amusement. Mrs. Dangle is quite in polite life; and she engages to “hintroduce” you every where. You will meet the best company at her table; for her husband is never happy without society. There is a Major Ogle in love with you only from description. He says, that I have entangled his heart, and that he must be our shadow; therefore, we shall not want for a beau, nor one that half the women in London are dying for.
I would advise you not to make up any thing when you are for your journey; it 286would be only so much labour lost. ”

“ Push your chairs closer together—with your feet, not your hands! You are easier to watch if you are not too far apart.”
Dangler complied sullenly. Skeeny, over the scraping of his chair legs, cursed in a sort of unnerved abandon, as he obeyed her.
“Thank you!” said Rhoda Gray pleasantly—and calmly tucked the necklace into her bodice.
The act seemed to rouse Danglar to the last pitch of fury. The blood rushed in an angry tide to his face, and, suffusing, purpled his cheeks. ”

“ That night after supper, as French stretched himself in his easy-chair, he decided he would have a preliminary look at the tracing. He recognized that the mere fact that it had been handed to Cheyne by Dangle involved the probability that it was not the genuine document but a faked copy. At the same time he was bound to make what he could of it, and it was with very keen interest he unfolded and began to study it.
It was neatly drawn, though evidently not by a professional draughtsman. The lettering of the words, “England expects every man to do his duty” was amateurish. ”

“ As he tried desperately for a fresh hold an urgent double knock sounded from below. Sweating and tugging with the jemmy he heard voices outside the window. And then with a resounding crack the panel gave, he plunged in his hand, seized the tracing, thrust it and the jemmy into his pocket and rushed out of the room.
But as he did so he heard the front door open and Dangle’s voice from below: “It sounded in the house. Didn’t you think so?” and Susan’s: “Yes, upstairs, I thought.”
Cheyne looked desperately round for a weapon. ”

“ You can trust me. I love a Dangler like a lad goin’ a-courtin’ loves to meet a skunk.”
“So you say, but I’m not so sure of it as I was a while ago. To be quite frank with you, there was someone behind me to-night—and whoever he was, he was in league with the Danglers.”
“There was two behind you to-night. Two. An’ I was only one of ’em. T’other was young Steve Dangler. But Steve didn’t know I was there, which was a pity for him, but a good thing for me an’ you. I didn’t reckon you’d have sense enough to take to the woods, so I up an’ beaned Steve so’s to clear the road behind you.” ”

“ But there ain’t no law ag’in a man losin’ himself in the woods. That’s the Dangler way, but don’t tell them I said so.”
“Do you really know something, or are you only talking?”
“I know what I’m talkin’ about, an’ I’m talkin’ for your good, Mr. Vane. I got a pretty clear memory more’n forty years long; an’ I can remember quite a slew of folks who’ve fell out with the Danglers one way an’ another; an’ some of them cleared out, an’ four was lost in the woods—five, countin’ poor Pete Sledge. ”

“ Keep in mind that ye’re talkin’ to yer pa, Steve Dangler. It wouldn’t of happened like that if I’d been there. My wits wouldn’t of been wool-pickin’ after no danged girl. I’d been watchin’ out behind.”
“All right, pa. You tell old Luke all about it.” ”

“ I am still more sorry to say the offenders were juniors in Wakefield’s,” (terrific yells and hoots from the Moderns) , “who ought to have known better, and who I hope are thoroughly ashamed of themselves,” (terrific cheers, during which, D’Arcy, Wally, and Ashby, who had been standing on a form, modestly took seats and exchanged defiant signals with the youth of the Modern side through the chinks of the crowd) . “They have had the licking they deserve,” (“Not half of it!” and laughter) , “as Dangle here, who was present at the time, will testify.” ”

“ But I had to sell the horse to Luke Dangler for four hundred.”
“Had to?”
“Had to is right, mister. Them Danglers an’ old Dave Hinch work together. Dave’s a money-lender—one of the real old-fashioned kind—and a note-shaver. He got hold of some of my paper once. ’Nough said! An’ the Danglers! Say, mister, any man who gets in dead wrong with a Dangler of Goose Crick had best clear out of this section of woods, or he’ll find himself dead in it some day. Yes, mister, they squoze the Willy Horse out of me an’ sold him down in Maryland for three thousand ”

“ Master Dandy!”—he had fallen upon his knees, at the feet of the other man, and was clasping his dress, in the agony of his appeal—“I knew you when you were a bright faced lad, laughing in the sunshine, and with no stain of blood upon you. Master Dandy——”
“Stain of blood!” cried Philip, recoiling. “What are you talking of? What madness possesses you?”
“No madness, Master Dandy—would to Heaven it might be!” cried the other. “It isn’t for me to see into a gentleman’s heart, or to know what temptations he may have, above such as I am. ”

“ Do you keep a silent tongue to every one.”
“You need not fear that I shall speak, Master Dandy,” replied the lad. “And it may not be so bad, after all; you may yet find a way of getting out of it, Master Dandy.”
“A way of getting out of it!” muttered Philip to himself, as he watched the retreating figure of his servant. “There seems but small chance of that. Robbery was bad enough; but this is another matter. She’s dead, and cannot speak; even if she were alive, she must point to me as Dandy Chater. ”

“ Ogledon took her up quickly. “Lying tongues, Mrs. Dolman? And what, pray, are they daring to say about our dear Dandy?”
“It seems, sir, that there has been a body found—of a young girl who belonged to these parts—in a wood near by; and, because Master Dandy has been seen talking to her once or twice— (as young men will, and always have done, since the good Lord made young men and women!) —they must needs go whispering about that Master Dandy made away with her.” ”