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‘No,’ he replied, his voice grave, but his eyes dancing. ‘I am an abductor. I met her only yesterday, and that by chance, snatched her up into my curricle, and bore her off in spite of all her protests to a gloomy mansion in the heart of the country. I need scarcely tell you that she contrived to make her escape from the mansion while I slept. However, it takes a good deal to daunt a thorough-going villain, so you won’t be surprised that here I am, having hunted her down remorselessly. I am now about to carry her off to my castle. This, by the way, is perched on a precipitous rock, and, besides being in an uncomfortable state of neglect and decay, is inhabited only by ghosts and sinister retainers of mine. From this fortress, after undergoing a number of extremely alarming adventures, she will, I have little doubt, be rescued by a noble youth of handsome though poverty-stricken aspect. I expect he will kill me, after which it will be found that he is the wronged heir to a vast property – probably mine – and all will end happily.’
‘Now, sir – !’ protested Mrs Ninfield, trying not to laugh. ‘Give over your nonsense, do!’
Joe, having listened with painstaking concentration to the programme laid down for Amanda’s future entertainment, once more clenched his large fists, and uttered, slowly, but with determination: ‘I won’t have her put in no castle.’
‘Don’t be a gaby!’ said his mother. ‘Can’t you see the gentleman’s only making game of her?’
‘I won’t have him make game of her neither,’ said Joe stubbornly.
‘Please to pay no heed, sir!’ begged Mrs Ninfield. ‘Now, that’s enough, Joseph! Do you want the gentleman to think you’re no better than a knock-in-the-cradle, which I’ll be bound he does?’
‘Not at all! I think he’s a splendid fellow,’ said Sir Gareth. ‘Don’t worry, Joe! I was only funning.’
‘I don’t want you to take her anywhere,’ Joe muttered. ‘I’d like her to stay here, fine I would!’
‘Yes, and so would I have liked to stay here!’ said Amanda warmly. ‘I never enjoyed anything half as much, particularly feeding all those droll little pigs, and these lovely kittens, but everything is spoilt now that Sir Gareth knows where I am, and it would be of no use staying here any more.’ Her voice trembled, and a tear sparkled on the end of her long lashes. She kissed the sandy kitten, and reluctantly set it down on the floor, giving such a pathetic sniff that Mr Ninfield, a tenderhearted man, said uncomfortably; ‘Don’t you take on, missie! P’raps, if my missis is agreeable –’ He stopped, as he caught his wife’s eye, and coughed in some embarrassment.
‘Cheer up, my child!’ Sir Gareth said. ‘This is no time for tears! You must instantly set about the task of thinking how best to revenge yourself on me.’
She cast him a darkling look, but said nothing. Inspiration came to Joe, his withers unbearably wrung by her distress. Swooping upon the sandy kitten, he picked it up by the scruff of its neck, and held it out to Amanda. ‘You take him!’ he said gruffly.
Nothing could have succeeded better in diverting her mind at that moment. Her face brightened; she clasped the kitten again, exclaiming: ‘Oh! How excessively kind of you! I am very much obliged to you! Only –’ Her eyes turned apprehensively to
wards her hostess, and she said prettily: ‘Perhaps it is your kitten, and you would not wish me to take it away?’
‘I’m sure you’re very welcome to it, miss, but I’ll be bound the gentleman won’t want to be worrited by a kitten on the journey,’ Mrs Ninfield responded.
‘I am going to take this dear little kitten with me,’ said Amanda, addressing herself to Sir Gareth, with immense dignity, and a challenge in her eye.
‘Do!’ he said cordially, tickling the kitten’s ear. ‘What shall you call it?’
She considered the matter. ‘Well, perhaps Honey, because of his colour, or –’ She broke off, as her gaze alighted on the kitten’s donor. ‘No, I shan’t!’ she said, bestowing a brilliant smile upon him. ‘I shall call him Joseph, after you, and that will remind me of feeding the pigs, and learning to milk the cow!’
At these very beautiful words, Joe was so overcome that he grew beetroot-red, and lost all power of speech, merely swallowing convulsively, and grinning in a way that made his fond mother itch to box his ears. Mr Ninfield went off, in a practical spirit, to find a covered basket; and in a very short time Sir Gareth, silently invoking a powerful blessing on the head of one who had, however unwittingly, averted the threat of a disagreeable scene, was handing his charge up into the curricle, and delivering into her hands a basket in which one small kitten indignantly vociferated his disapproval of the change in his circumstances.
Eleven
It was not to be expected that Amanda’s pleasure in having acquired a new pet would for long save Sir Gareth from recrimination. She had never been wholly diverted, but had ceased from further argument because she had perceived how deftly he was cutting the ground from beneath her inexperienced feet. It made her very angry, but she could not help admiring, secretly, a strategy which she recognized to be masterly; nor, in spite of a strengthened determination to put him utterly to rout, did she think the worse of him for having got the better of her. But that she was certainly not going to tell him, far preferring to relieve her feelings by delivering herself of a comprehensive indictment of his character. To this, Trotton, perched up behind her, listened in shocked and wondering silence. What Sir Gareth could see in such a young termagant to make him fall madly in love Trotton could not imagine, but he did not for an instant doubt that his master was clean besotted.
‘You are meddlesome, and tyrannical, and untruthful, and, which is worse than all, treacherous!’ scolded Amanda.
‘Not treacherous!’ protested Sir Gareth. ‘I promise you, I told none of those people the true story.’
‘I am quite astonished that you didn’t, for I daresay you don’t care a button about breaking your solemn word to people!’
‘I didn’t think they would believe me,’ explained Sir Gareth.
‘And above everything you are shameless!’ said Amanda indignantly.
‘No, not quite, because, I assure you, I am shocked at my own mendacity.’
‘You are?’ she exclaimed, turning her head to study his profile.
‘Profoundly! I never knew I had it in me to tell so many bouncers.’
‘Well, you did – brazenly, too!’
‘Yes, and you don’t know the half of it. When I think of the Banbury story I told at the Red Lion, I know that I am sunk beyond reproach.’
