‘I thought I knew your sex. I was wrong.’
‘Oh!’ she said again. ‘Do you mean that I don’t behave as a delicately bred female should?’
‘That is one way of putting it, certainly.’
‘It is the way Aunt Almeria puts it.’
‘She would, of course.’
‘I am afraid,’ confessed Pen, ‘that I am not very well-behaved. Aunt says that I had a lamentable upbringing, because my father treated me as though I had been a boy. I ought to have been, you understand.’
‘I cannot agree with you,’ said Sir Richard. ‘As a boy you would have been in no way remarkable; as a female, believe me, you are unique.’
She flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘Ithinkthat is a compliment.’
‘It is,’ Sir Richard said, amused.
‘Well, I wasn’t sure, because I am not out yet, and I do not know any men except my uncle and Fred, and they don’t paycompliments. That is to say, not like that.’ She looked up rather shyly, but chancing to catch sight of someone through the window, suddenly exclaimed: ‘Why, there’s Mr Yarde!’
‘Mr who?’ asked Sir Richard, turning his head.
‘You can’t see him now: he has gone past the window. Youmustremember Mr Yarde, sir! He was the odd little man who got into the coach at Chippenham, and used such queer words that I could not perfectly understand him. Do you suppose he can be coming to this inn?’
‘I sincerely trust not!’ said Sir Richard.
FIVE
His trust was soon seen to have been misplaced, for after a few minutes the landlord came into the room, to ask apologetically whether the noble gentleman would object to giving up one of his rooms to another traveller. ‘I told him as how your honour had bespoke both bedchambers, but he is very wishful to get a lodging, sir, so I told him as how I would ask your honour if, maybe, the young gentleman could share your honour’s chamber – there being two beds, sir.
Sir Richard, meeting Miss Creed’s eye for one pregnant moment, saw that she was struggling with a strong desire to burst out laughing. His own lips quivered, but before he could answer the landlord, the sharp face of Mr Jimmy Yarde peered over that worthy’s shoulder.
Upon recognizing the occupants of the parlour, Mr Yarde seemed to be momentarily taken aback. He recovered himself quickly, however, to thrust his way into the parlour with a very fair assumption of delight at encountering two persons already known to him. ‘Well, if it ain’t my young chub!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dang me if I didn’t think the pair of you had loped off to Wroxhall!’
‘No,’ said Sir Richard. ‘It appeared to me that Wroxhall would be over-full of travellers tonight.’
‘Ay, you’re a damned knowing one, ain’t you? Knowed it the instant I clapped my glaziers on you. And right you are! Says I to myself, “Wroxhall’s no place for you, Jimmy, my boy!”’
‘Was the thin woman still having the vapours?’ asked Pen.
‘Lordy, young chub, she were stretched out as stiff as a corpse when I loped off, and no one knowing what to do to bring her to her senses. Ah, and mighty peevy I thought myself, to hit on the notion of coming to this ken – not knowing as you had bespoke all the rooms afore me.’
His bright face shifted to Sir Richard’s unpromising countenance. ‘Unfortunate!’ said Sir Richard politely.
‘Ah, now!’ wheedled Mr Yarde, ‘you wouldn’t go for to out-jockey Jimmy Yarde! Lordy, it’s all of eleven o’clock, and the light gone. What’s to stop your doubling up with the young shaver?’
‘If your honour would condescend to allow the young gentleman to sleep in the spare bed in your honour’s chamber?’ interpolated the landlord in an ingratiating tone.
‘No,’ said Sir Richard. ‘I am an extremely light sleeper, and my nephew snores.’ Ignoring an indignant gasp from Pen, he turned to Mr Yarde. ‘Do you snore?’ he asked.
Jimmy grinned. ‘Not me! I sleep like a babby, so help me!’
‘Then you,’ said Sir Richard, ‘may share my room.’
‘Done!’ said Jimmy promptly. ‘Spoke like a rare gager, guv’nor, which I knew you was. Damme, if I don’t drain a clank to your very good health!’
Resigning himself to the inevitable, Sir Richard nodded to the landlord, and bade Jimmy draw up a chair.
Not having boarded the stagecoach when Pen had announced Sir Richard to be her tutor, Jimmy apparently accepted her new relationship without question. He spoke of her to Sir Richard as ‘your nevvy,’ drank both their healths in gin-and-water bespoken by Sir Richard, and seemed to be inclined to make a night of it. He became rather loquacious over his second glass of daffy, and made several mysterious references to Files, and those engaged on the Dub-lay, and the Kidd. Various embittered strictures on Flash Culls led Sir Richard to infer that he had lately been working in partnership with persons above his own social standing, and did not mean to repeat the experience.
