At the very end a few currant bushes partially hid the front of the shed and glass-house.
They were the one scrap of cover, and when she reached them she had a mind to crouch and hide, if only for a moment, from the staring windows.
Her own eyes, as she passed these bushes, were fastened on the shed.
But it seemed that someone else had discovered shelter here; for with a quick, half-guttural cry, like that of a startled animal, a small figure started up, close by her feet, and stood and edged away from her with an arm lifted as if to ward off a blow.
It was a small boy--a boy abominably ragged and with smears of blacking thick on his face, but for all that a good-looking child.

Tilda gazed at him, and he gazed back, still without lowering his arm.

He was trembling, too.
"Doctor Livingstone, I presume ?" said Tilda, lifting the brim of her chip hat and quoting from one of Mr.Maggs's most effective dramatic sketches.

But as the boy stared, not taking the allusion, she went on, almost in the same breath, "Is your name Arthur--Arthur Miles ?" It seemed that he did not hear.

At any rate he still backed and edged away from her, with eyes distended--she had seen their like in the ring, in beautiful terrified horses, but never in human creatures.
-- "Because, if you 're Arthur Miles, I got a message for you." A tattered book lay on the turf at her feet.