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Time passed. Sir Charles drew out his watch, and frowned. Speenhamland, where rooms for the night had been bespoken, was fully fifty-five miles distant, and the start of the journey had already been delayed by the chattiness of the Misses Titterstone. The horses were on the fret. Sir Charles walked them to the top of the street, and back again. When he had repeated this exercise some half a dozen times, there was a sparkle in his eye which made his groom thankful that it was the young lady and not himself who was keeping Sir Charles waiting.
At the end of another twenty minutes there erupted from the shop a vision in whom Sir Charles with difficulty recognized Miss Anne Massingham. Not only was she now array
ed in a crimson velvet pelisse, but she had set upon her head an all-too dashing hat, whose huge, upstanding poke-front was lined with gathered silk, and whose high crown was embellished with a plume of curled ostrich feathers. This confection was secured by broad satin ribbons, tied in a jaunty bow under one ear; and it displayed to advantage Miss Massingham’s dark curls, now released from bondage, and rioting frivolously. A tippet and muff completed this modish toilet; and she carried, with its forepaws drooping over the muff, a curly-tailed puppy of mixed parentage. This circumstance did not immediately strike Sir Charles, for his gaze was riveted to that preposterous hat.
‘Good God!’ he ejaculated. ‘My good child, you are not, I trust, proposing to travel to London in that bonnet?’
‘Yes, I am,’ asserted Miss Massingham. ‘It is the high kick of fashion!’
‘It is quite unsuited to a journey, and still more so to your years,’ said Sir Charles crushingly.
‘Fiddle!’ said Miss Massingham. ‘I am not a schoolgirl now, and if it had not been for Grandpapa’s illness I should have ceased to be one a year ago! I am nineteen, you know, and I have been saving all my money for months to buy just such a hat as this! You could not be so unkind as to forbid me to wear it!’
Sir Charles looked down into the pleading, upturned face; Sir Charles’s groom stared woodenly ahead. ‘What,’ demanded Sir Charles, turning upon the unhappy Mrs Fitton, ‘possessed you to let your mistress buy such a hat?’
‘Oh, don’t scold poor Fitton!’ begged Miss Massingham. ‘Indeed, she implored me not to!’
Sir Charles found himself quite unable to withstand the look of entreaty in those big eyes. A whimper from the creature in Miss Massingham’s arms provided him with a diversion. ‘How did you come by that animal?’ he asked sternly.
‘Is he not the dearest little dog? He came running into the shop, and Madame Lucille told me that her pug has had six puppies just like him! She let me buy this one very cheaply, because she is very desirous of disposing of them all.’
‘I imagine she might be,’ said Sir Charles, viewing the pup with disfavour. ‘However, it is no concern of mine, and we have wasted too much time already. If we are to reach Speenhamland in time for dinner we must make haste.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Miss Massingham blithely. ‘And may I ride with you in your curricle, Sir Charles?’ She read prohibition in his eye, and added coaxingly: ‘Just for a little way, may I? For your groom, you know, may easily go with Fitton in the chaise.’
Again Sir Charles found it impossible to withstand the entreaty in those eyes. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If you think you won’t be cold, you may jump up beside me.’
3
BY THE TIME the curricle had reached Bath Easton, Miss Massingham had begged Sir Charles to call her Nan, because, she said, everyone did so; and Sir Charles had reprimanded her for saying that her friends in Queen’s Square had greatly envied her her good fortune in being escorted to London by one who was well-known to be a buck of the first head.
‘A what?’ said Sir Charles.
‘Well, it is what Priscilla Gretton’s brother said, when she rallied him on the way he tied his neckcloth,’ explained Nan. ‘He said it was just how you tie yours, and that you were a buck of the first head.’
‘I am obliged to Mr Gretton for his approval,’ said Sir Charles, ‘and I dare say that when he has learnt to refrain alike from trying to copy my way with a neckcloth and from teaching cant phrases to schoolgirls he may do tolerably well.’
‘I can see that it is an expression I should not have used,’ said Nan knowledgeably. ‘Must I not call you a Nonpareil either, sir?’
He laughed. ‘If you wish! But why should you talk about me at all? Tell me about yourself!’
She was doubtful whether so limited a subject could interest him, but since she was of a confiding nature it was not long before she was chatting happily to him. When the horses were changed, there was very little about Miss Massingham that he did not know; and since he found her curious mixture of innocence and worldly wisdom something quite out of the common way he was not sorry that she spurned a suggestion that she should continue the journey in the chaise. She was not, she said, at all chilly; she had been wondering, on the contrary, whether she might perhaps be allowed to take the ribbons.
‘Certainly not!’ said Sir Charles.
‘You are such a famous whip yourself, sir, that you could very easily teach me to drive,’ argued Miss Massingham, in persuasive accents.
‘No doubt I could, but I shall not. I dislike being driven.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Massingham, damped. ‘I don’t mean to tease you, only it would be such a thing to boast of!’
He could not help laughing. ‘Absurd brat! Well – for half an hour, then, but no longer!’
‘Thank you!’ said Miss Massingham, her air of gentle melancholy vanishing.
When she was at last induced to give the reins back to her instructor, the Beckhampton Inn had been passed, and the chaise had long been out of sight. Sir Charles put his pair along at a spanking pace, and would no doubt have overtaken the chaise had his companion not announced suddenly that she was hungry. A glance at his watch showed him that it was past one o’clock. He said ruefully: ‘I should have stopped to give you a nuncheon rather than have let you take the ribbons.’
‘We could stop now, could we not, sir?’ said Miss Massingham hopefully.
