“I can keep my chaffer close,” replied Jason, with dignity, “but it queers me what your lay is this time!”
The Viscount tossed Miss Wantage up into the curricle, gathered the reins in his hand, and prepared to mount beside her. “I’m going to be married.”
“You never!” gasped Jason. “But she ain’t the right one, guv’nor! Lor’, you must have had a shove in the mouth too many, and I never suspicioned you was lushy, so help me bob! Werry well you carries it, guv’nor! werry well, indeed! Gammoning me wot knows you you was sober as a judge, and all the time as leaky as a sieve! But what’ll you say when you comes about, me lord? A rare set-out that’ll be, and you a-blamin’ of me for letting you make off with the wrong gentry-mort!”
“Confound your impudence, of course I’m sober!” said the Viscount wrathfully. “You keep your nose out of my affairs! What the devil are you laughing at, Hero?”
“I think he’s so droll!” gurgled Miss Wantage. “What is a gentry-mort?”
“God knows! The fellow can’t open his mouth without letting fall a lot of thieves’ cant. Not fit for your ears at all. Stand away from their heads! all’s right!”
The curricle moved forward. Jason sprang nimbly up behind, and said over the top of the lowered hood: “I’m not a-going to keep me sneezer out o’your affairs, guv’nor. Be you ee-loping?”
“Of course I’m not — Good God, so I am!” said his lordship, much struck.
“Because if you be,” pursued Jason, “and if you don’t wish no one to know nothing about it, that young gentry-mort didn’t ought to be a-settin’ up there beside you like she is.”
“By Jove, he’s in the right of it!” exclaimed the Viscount, reining in suddenly. “We shall have half the countryside blabbing that they saw you driving off with me! There’s nothing for it: you’ll have to sit on the floorboards, and keep yourself hidden under the rug, Hero.”
Her experience of life not having engendered in Hero any expectation of having either her dignity or her comfort much regarded, she made no objection to this proposal, but curled up at the Viscount’s feet, and allowed him to cast the rug over her. Since his method of driving was of the style known as neck-or-nothing, she was considerably jolted, but she made no complaint, merely clasping her arms round the Viscount’s top-boots, and pressing her cheek against the side of his knee. In this fashion they covered the next few miles. The Viscount pulled up beyond the second tollgate, giving it as his opinion that they were now reasonably safe from any chance encounter with persons who might recognize them.
“I don’t mind staying where I am, if you think it would be better for me to do so, Sherry,” Hero assured him.
“Yes, but you’re giving me cramp in my left leg,” said the single-minded Viscount. “Get up, brat, and for the lord’s sake smooth your hair! You look the most complete romp!”
Miss Wantage did her best to comply with this direction, but without any marked degree of success. Fortunately, the exigencies of the particular mode of hairdressing affected by his lordship obliged him to carry a comb upon his person. He produced this, dragged it through the soft, tangled curls, tied the hood strings under Hero’s chin, and, after a critical survey, said that it would answer well enough. Miss Wantage smiled trustfully up at him, and the Viscount made a discovery. “You look just like a kitten!”
She laughed. “No, do I, Sherry?”
“Yes, you do. I think it’s your silly little nose,” said the Viscount, flicking it with a careless forefinger. “That, or the trick you have of staring at a fellow with your eyes wide open. I think I shall call you Kitten. It suits you better than Hero, which I always thought a nonsensical name for a girl.”
“Oh, it is the greatest affliction to me!” she exclaimed. “You can have no notion, Sherry! I would much rather you should call me Kitten.”
“Very well, that’s settled,” said Sherry, giving his horses the office to start again. “What we have to do now is to decide what the devil I’m to do with you when I get you to London.”
“You said you would buy me some new clothes,” Hero reminded him, not without a touch of anxiety.
“I’ll do that, of course, but the thing that’s worrying me a trifle is where you are to sleep tonight,” confessed Sherry. “We shan’t have time to be married today, you know.”
“No, not if we are to go shopping,” agreed Hero. “I could come home with you, couldn’t I?”
“No, certainly not! Wouldn’t do at all!” responded Sherry decidedly. “Besides, I haven’t a home. I mean, I live in a lodging off St James’s Street, and it’s not a situation that would suit you. What’s more, there’s no room for you. I suppose I could take you to Sheringham House, but I shouldn’t think you’d be very comfortable there, with only old Varley and his wife in charge of the place, and everything under holland covers.”
“Oh no! Please don’t take me there!” begged Hero, quite daunted by such a prospect.
Jason, who had been listening with the greatest interest to the conversation, interposed at this point to give it as his opinion that nothing could be more prejudicial to the smooth conduct of the elopement than for Varley, who he described as a tattling old chub who could be counted on to whiddle the whole scrap, to get wind of the lay. The Viscount, who, in common with every other young blood, was fond of interlarding his conversation with cant terms, found no difficulty in understanding this dark warning. On the whole he agreed with it, but he said with some severity that these strictures on an old family retainer had their origin in Varley’s discovery of an attempted theft of his watch-and-chain, some months previously.
“And that puts me in mind of something I forgot!” he exclaimed, turning his head over his shoulder. “Dashed if I wasn’t in such a pucker when I left home that it went clean out of my head! I don’t know what you stole while we were there, but you can’t have been two days in the place without biting something. Hand it over!”
“Keep your glims on the road, guv’nor, keep your glims on the road!” Jason besought him. “I never mills any ken of yours! I’ll cap downright I never did, nor I never will!”
“Jason!” said his lordship, in minatory accents.
The Tiger gave a sniff. “I forked a couple of meggs from the tallow-faced old cull,” he admitted sulkily. “He never tipped me a Jack, he didn’t.”
“Do you mean you filched a couple of guineas from my uncle?” demanded Sherry.
“Well, how was I to know you didn’t want him forked?” asked Jason. “You never said nothing to me about it, guv’nor, nor I didn’t think he was a friend o’yourn!”
“Oh, well, if that’s all, there’s no harm done!” said Sherry cheerfully. “Not but what it was probably my money, if we only knew.”
“Does he always steal things, Sherry?” whispered Hero, round-eyed.
“Oh, yes, always! He can’t help it, you know.”
“But is it not very awkward?”
“No, it doesn’t worry me,” Sherry replied simply, “never takes anything of mine. It used to be a devilish nuisance when he would keep on forking my friends — he had my cousin Ferdy’s watch five times before I broke him of it — but he don’t do that now, and in any event most people know that if they lose anything when they’ve been with me they have only to tell me about it. Always hands over the booty if I ask him for it. That reminds me! Hi, Jason! Don’t you dare steal anything from this lady! Mind, now! I’ll turn you off without a character if she misses so much as a handkerchief.”
“You wouldn’t never, guv’nor!” gasped the Tiger, horrified.
“Well, no,” admitted Sherry. “I dare say I wouldn’t. But I’d break every bone in your body, so don’t you forget it!”
This merciful mitigation of the threat appeared to relieve the Tiger’s mind. He heaved a sigh, and very handsomely offered to allow himself to be nibbled to death by ducks if he should so far forget himself as to take even a pin from his prospective mistress.
The Viscount, accepting this assurance, told Miss Wantage that she might rest at ease. “Matter of fact, I don’t suppose he would think of robbing you,” he confided. “Still, we may as well be on the safe side. Queer little fellow! Do anything in the world for me, and damme if I know why!”