“I didn’t! It was you who would come!”
“I was drunk.”
“Well, that was not my fault,” she pointed out.
“Don’t interrupt me! You have made me travel for miles in a conveyance smelling strongly of dirt and onions—”
“That was the fat woman’s husband,” interpolated Pen. “I noticed it myself.”
“No one could have failed to notice it. And I am not partial to onions. You drew a portrait of me which led everyone in the coach to regard me in the light of an oppressor of innocent youth—”
“Not the thin, disagreeable man. He wanted me to be oppressed.”
“He was a person of great discrimination. Not content with that, you pitchforked me into what threatens to be a life-friendship with a pickpocket, to escape from whose advances I am obliged to tramp five miles, carrying a portmanteau which is much heavier than I had supposed possible. It only remains for me to become embroiled in an action for kidnapping, which I feel reasonably assured your aunt will bring against me.”
“Yes, and now I come to think of it, I remember that you said you were going to be married,” said Pen, quite unimpressed by these strictures. “Will she be very angry with you?”
“I hope she will be so very angry that she will wish never to see my face again,” said Sir Richard calmly. “In fact, brat, that reflection so far outweighs all other considerations that I forgive you the rest.”
“I think you are a very odd sort of person,” said Pen. “Why did you ask her to marry you, if you did not wish to?”
“I didn’t. During the past two days that is the only folly I have not committed.”
“Well, why did you mean to ask her, then?”
“You should know.”
“But you are a man! No one could make you do anything you did not choose to do!”
“They came mighty near it. If you had not dropped out of the window into my arms, I have little doubt that I should at this moment be receiving the congratulations of my acquaintance.”
“Well, I must say I do not think you are at all just to me, then, to call me a pestilent child! I saved you—though, indeed, I didn’t know it—from a horrid fate.”
“True. But need I have been saved in a noisome stagecoach?”
“That was part of the adventure. Besides, I explained to you at the outset why I was travelling on the stage. You must own that we are having a very exciting time! And, what is more, you have had more adventure than I, for you actually shared a room with a real thief!”
“So I did,” said Sir Richard, apparently much struck by this circumstance.
“And I can plainly see a cottage ahead of us, so I expect we have reached Colerne,” she said triumphantly.
In a few moments, she was found to have been right. They walked into the village, and fetched up at the best-looking inn.
“Now, what particular lie shall we tell here?” asked Sir Richard.
“A wheel came off our post-chaise,” replied Pen promptly.
“Are you never at a loss?” he enquired, regarding her in some amusement.
“Well, to tell you the truth I haven’t had very much experience,” she confided.
“Believe me, no one would suspect that.”
“No, I must say I think I was quite born to be a vagabond,” she said seriously.
The story of the faulty wheel was accepted by the landlord of the Green Man without question. If he thought it strange that the travellers should have left the main highway to brave the perils of rough country lanes, his mild surprise was soon dissipated by the announcement that they were on their way to Queen Charlton, and had attempted to find a shorter road. He said that they would have done better to have followed the Bristol road to Cold Ashton, but that perhaps they were strangers in these parts?
“Precisely,” said Sir Richard. “But we are going to visit friends at Queen Charlton, and we wish to hire some sort of a vehicle to carry us there.”
The smile faded from the landlord’s face when he heard this, and he shook his head. There were no vehicles for hire at Colerne. There was, in fact, only one suitable carriage, and that his own gig. “Which I’d be pleased to let out to your honour if I had but a man to send with it. But the lads is all out haymaking, and I can’t go myself. Maybe the blacksmith could see what’s to be done to patch up your chaise, sir?”
“Quite useless!” said Sir Richard truthfully. “The wheel is past repairing. Moreover, I instructed my postilion to ride back to Wroxhall. What will you take for lending your gig to me without a man to go with it?”
“Well, sir, it ain’t that so much, but how will I get it back?”
“Oh, one of Sir Jasper’s grooms will drive it back!” said Pen. “You need have no fear on that score!”
“Would that be Sir Jasper Luttrell, sir?”
“Yes, indeed, we are going on a visit to him.”
The landlord was plainly shaken. Sir Jasper was apparently well-known to him; on the other hand Sir Richard was not. He cast him a doubtful, sidelong look, and slowly shook his head.
“Well, if you won’t let out your gig on hire, I suppose I shall have to buy it,” said Sir Richard.
“Buy my gig, sir?” gasped the landlord, staggered.
“And the horse too, of course,” added Sir Richard, pulling out his purse.
The landlord blinked at him. “Well, I’m sure, sir! If that’s the way it is, I don’t know but what I could let you drive the gig over yourself—seeing as how you’re a friend of Sir Jasper. Come to think of it, I won’t be needing it for a couple of days. Only you’ll have to rest the old horse afore you send him back, mind!”
Sir Richard raised no objection to this, and after coming to terms with an ease which led to the landlord’s expressing the wish that there were more gentlemen like Sir Richard to be met with, the travellers had only to wait until the cob had been harnessed to the gig, and led round to the front of the inn.
The gig was neither smart nor well-sprung, and the cob’s gait was more sure than swift, but Pen was delighted with the whole equipage. She sat perched up beside Sir Richard, enjoying the hot sunshine, and pointing out to him the manifold superiorities of the Somerset countryside over any other county.
They did not reach Queen Charlton until dusk, since the way to it was circuitous, and often very rough. When they came within sight of the village, Sir Richard said: “Well, brat, what now? Am I to drive you to Sir Jasper Luttrell’s house?”
Pen, who had become rather silent during the last five miles of their drive, said with a little gasp: “I have been thinking that perhaps it would be better if I sent a message in the morning! It is not Piers, you know, but, though I did not think of her at the time, it—it has occurred to me that perhaps Lady Luttrell may not perfectly understand ...”
Her voice died away unhappily. She was revived by Sir Richard’s saying in matter-of-fact tones: “A very good notion. We will drive to an inn.”
“The George was always accounted the best,” offered Pen. “I have never actually been inside it, but my father was used to say its cellars were excellent.”
The George was discovered to be an ancient half-timbered hostelry with beamed ceilings, and wainscoted parlours. It was a rambling house, with a large yard, and many chintz-hung bedrooms. There was no difficulty in procuring a private parlour, and by the time Pen had washed the dust of the roads from her face, and unpacked the cloak-bag, her spirits, which had sunk unaccountably, had begun to lift again. Dinner was served in the parlour, and neither the landlord nor his wife seemed to recognize in the golden-haired stripling the late Mr Creed’s tomboyish little girl.
“If only my aunt does not discover me before I have found Piers!” Pen said, helping herself to some more raspberries.
“We will circumvent her. But touching this question of Piers, do you—er—suppose that he will be able to extricate you from your present difficulties?”
“Well, he will have to, if I marry him, won’t he?”
“Undoubtedly. But—you must not think me an incorrigible wet blanket—it is not precisely easy to be married at a moment’s notice.”