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‘Oh!’ said Miss Paradise, surveying the spring morning with enthusiasm. ‘It is quite daylight! I have had the most delightful sleep.’
Mr Morley repeated his observation, not without a hint of pugnacity in his voice.
Since the start of the elopement, rather more than nine hours before, Miss Paradise, who was just eighteen, had been a trifle difficult to manage. She had begun by taking strong exception to the ladder he had brought for her escape from her bedroom window. Her remarks, delivered in an indignant undertone as she had prepared to descend the ladder, might have been thought to augur ill for the success of the runaway match; but Mr Morley, who was also just eighteen, had quarrelled with Miss Paradise from the cradle, and thought her behaviour the most natural in the world. The disposition she showed to take the management of her flight into her own hands led to further wrangles, because, however much she might have been in the habit of taking the lead in their past scrapes, an elopement was a very different matter, and called for a display of male initiative. But when he had tried to point this out to Miss Paradise she had merely retorted, ‘Stuff! It was I who made the plan to elope. Now, Rupert, you know it was!’
This rejoinder was unanswerable, and Mr Morley, who had been arguing in favour of putting up for the night at a respectable posting-house, had allowed himself to be overruled. They had travelled swiftly northwards by moonlight (a circumstance which had filled the romantic Miss Paradise with rapture) with the result that a good deal of Mr Morley’s zest for the adventure had worn off by the time he made his announcemen
t at eight o’clock.
He was prepared to encounter opposition, but Miss Paradise, engaged in the task of tidying her tumbled curls, assented light-heartedly.
‘To be sure, I am excessively hungry,’ she said.
She picked up a chip hat from the seat and tied it on her head by its green gauze ribbons.
‘I dare say I must look a positive fright,’ she remarked; ‘but you can have no notion how much I am enjoying myself.’
This buoyancy had the effect of making Mr Morley slightly morose.
‘I can’t imagine what there is to enjoy in being bumped about all night,’ he said.
Miss Paradise turned her enchanting little face towards him, and exclaimed with considerable chagrin: ‘Are you not enjoying it at all, Rupert? I must say I do think you need not get into a miff merely because of being bumped a trifle.’
‘I am not in a miff!’ said Mr Morley, ‘but –’
‘Oh, Rupert!’ cried Miss Paradise, letting her muff fall. ‘Don’t, don’t say that you do not want to elope with me, after all!’
‘No, of course I do,’ responded Mr Morley. ‘The fact is, I didn’t contrive to sleep above an hour or two. I shall be in better cue after breakfast.’
‘Yes, I expect that’s it,’ nodded Miss Paradise, relieved. ‘Only, I don’t think we should waste very much time, you know, because when Papa discovers our flight he is bound to pursue us.’
‘I don’t see that,’ objected Mr Morley. ‘He can’t know where you have gone.’
‘Yes, he can,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘I left a note on my pillow for him.’
‘What!’ ejaculated Mr Morley. ‘Good heavens, Bab, why?’
‘But he would be in a dreadful rout if I hadn’t told him,’ explained Miss Paradise. ‘And even though he has behaved shockingly to me I don’t want him to be anxious about me.’
Mr Morley retorted: ‘If you think to have put an end to his anxiety by telling him you have eloped with me you very much mistake the matter.’
‘No, but at least he will be sure that I am safe,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘You know that he likes you extremely, Rupert, even though he does not wish me to marry you. That is only because he says you are too young; and because he has this stupid notion that I must make a good match, of course,’ she added candidly.
‘Well, I think you must be mad,’ said Mr Morley. ‘I’ll lay you a button he rides over immediately to tell my father. Then we shall have the pair of them at our heels, and a pretty pucker there will be.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ confessed Miss Paradise. ‘But I dare say we shall have reached Gretna Green long before they come up with us.’
The chaise had arrived at the George Inn by this time, and had turned in under the archway to the courtyard. The steps were let down and the travellers alighted. Mr Morley felt stiff, but Miss Paradise gave her tiffany skirts a shake and tripped into the inn for all the world as though she had enjoyed a perfect night’s rest.
There was not much sign of activity in the George at this early hour, but the landlord came out and led the way to a private parlour overlooking the street, and promised to serve breakfast in the shortest possible time. He betrayed no extraordinary curiosity, the extremely youthful appearance of his guests leading him to suppose them to be brother and sister.
Miss Paradise, realizing this, was disappointed, and commented on it to Mr Morley with considerable dissatisfaction.
‘Well, thank Heaven for it,’ said Mr Morley.
‘Sometimes, Rupert,’ said Miss Paradise, ‘I think you are not romantic in the very least.’
‘I never said that I was,’ replied Mr Morley.
