MRS. ROBERTS, bustling wildly about: ‘Yes, yes. But what—Bella! Bridget! Maggy!—Oh, I’ll go for it myself, and I _won’t_ stop to listen! Only—only don’t die!’ While Roberts remains with his eyes shut, and his head sunk on his breast in token of extreme exhaustion, she disappears and reappears through the door leading to her chamber, and then through the _portière_ cutting off the dining-room. She finally descends upon her husband with a flagon of cologne in one hand, a small decanter of brandy in the other, and a wineglass held in the hollow of her arm against her breast. She contrives to set the glass down on the mantel and fill it from the flagon, then she turns with the decanter in her hand, and while she presses the glass to her husband’s lips, begins to pour the brandy on his head. ‘Here! this will revive you, and it’ll refresh you to have this cologne on your head.’ ROBERTS, rejecting a mouthful of the cologne with a furious sputter, and springing to his feet: ‘Why, you’ve given me the cologne to _drink_, Agnes! What are you about? Do you want to poison me? Isn’t it enough to be robbed at six o’clock on the Common, without having your head soaked in brandy, and your whole system scented up like a barber’s shop, when you get home?’ MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Robbed?’ She drops the wineglass, puts the decanter down on the hearth, and carefully bestowing the flagon of cologne in the wood-box, abandons herself to justice: ‘Then let them come for me at once, Edward! If I could have the heart to send you out in such a night as this for a few wretched rosebuds, I’m quite equal to poisoning you. Oh, Edward, _who_ robbed you?’ ROBERTS: ‘That’s what I don’t know.’ He continues to wipe his head with his handkerchief, and to sputter a little from time to time. ‘All I know is that when I got—phew!—to that dark spot by the Frog Pond, just by—phew!—that little group of—phew!—evergreens, you know—phew!—’ MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Yes, yes; go on! I can bear it, Edward.’ ROBERTS: ‘—a man brushed heavily against me, and then hurried on in the other direction. I had unbuttoned my coat to look at my watch under the lamp-post, and after he struck against me I clapped my hand to my waistcoat, and—phew!—’ MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Waistcoat! Yes!’ ROBERTS: ‘—found my watch gone.’ MRS. ROBERTS: ‘What! Your watch? The watch Willis gave you? Made out of the gold that he mined himself when he first went out to California? Don’t ask me to believe it, Edward! But I’m only too glad that you escaped with your life. Let them have the watch and welcome. Oh, nay dear, dear husband!’ She approaches him with extended arms, and then suddenly arrests herself. ‘But you’ve got it on!’