“You did!” she retorted. “And although I can’t say that I paid much heed to your advice it so happens that I am accompanied today by my aunt!”
“Who adds invisibility to her other accomplishments!”
She could not help laughing, but said as coldly as she could: “She is making a purchase in that shop, and is to meet me in Hookham’s Library presently. I trust you are satisfied!”
“I am not at all satisfied. Unless you wish to appear as a fast female, you will not show yourself unattended in any of London’s fashionable lounges — least of all in Bond Street! If that is your ambition, look for another sponsor! And don’t nauseate me with fiddle-faddle about your advanced years! You may pass in Herefordshire for a woman of sense, but here you are merely a green — a very green girl, Frederica!”
These harsh words aroused conflicting emotions in her breast. Her first impulse was to give him a sharp set-down. Such arrogance certainly deserved a set-down; on the other hand, he was quite capable of withdrawing his patronage, which, if it did not ruin her plans, would be extremely inconvenient. The thought that with his friendship she would lose all her comfort she thrust to the back of her mind. She said, achieving a respectable compromise: “To be sure, I am very green, for until I saw you coming towards me I didn’t know this was a fashionable lounge! I’m much obliged to you for telling me, and I can’t think how I came to be so stupid! As though I had never heard of Bond Street beaux, which of course I have! Are you — what do you call it? — on the strut?”
“No, vixen, I am not on the strut!” he replied, an appreciative gleam in his eye. “Merely on my way to Jackson’s Boxing Saloon!”
“How horrid!”
“That,” said his lordship, “from one who lately described to me the precise significance of good science, is coming it very much too brown, Frederica!”
She laughed. “Well, it is horrid, for all that! How detestable of you to have encouraged me to make such a cake of myself, when I daresay you know much more about the sport than I do!”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if I did,” he agreed. “Also more about the conventions to be observed by young ladies of quality.”
“That crow has been plucked already! How can you be so unhandsome as to go on scolding? Haven’t I owned I was at fault?”
“If to offer me a gratuitous insult is to own yourself at fault — ”
“No, no! not gratuitous, cousin!” she interposed.
“One of these days,” said his lordship, with careful restraint, “you will come by your just deserts, my girl! At least, so I hope!”
“Oh, how unkind!” Her eyes twinkled up at him, but she became serious almost immediately, and said contritely: “What a charge we are upon you! I beg your pardon: you have been very kind! I never meant, you know, to embroil you in our affairs, and I am determined you shan’t be called upon again to rescue us from sudden dilemmas.”
“From which I deduce that your brothers are not — at the moment — engaged on any hazardous enterprise,” he remarked.
“Now that,” she said indignantly, “is most unjust! You were not called upon to rescue Felix from the steampacket; and, as for Jessamy, he at least doesn’t get into scrapes!”
He acknowledged it; but it was Jessamy who plunged him, not many days later, into the affair of the Pedestrian Curricle.
This ingenious machine was the very latest crack, and bidding fair to become the transient rage. Of simple construction, it consisted of two wheels, with a saddle hung between them, the foremost of which could be made to turn by means of a bar. It was propelled by the rider’s feet on the road, and experts could achieve quite astonishing speeds, when, admirably balancing themselves, they would lift their feet from the ground and coast along at a great rate, and to the amazement of beholders. Jessamy had seen one of these experts riding his Pedestrian Curricle in the park, and had instantly become fired with the spirit of emulation. His adventurous nature, chafing as much under the loss of his horses as from his self-imposed regiment of rigorous study, flamed into revolt: here, he perceived, was the means by which he could, without involving Frederica in extra expenditure, find an outlet for his restless energy, and demonstrate to the world that his odious little brother was not the only Merriville with bottom enough to engage in hazardous exploits. He discovered that there were several schools where the new art was taught, and which were willing to hire their machines to proficient pupils. It did not take him long to become one of these, or, when he ventured to sally forth from the school on a hired machine, to learn to guide it through such traffic as he encountered in the quieter streets. Lufra was his companion on these expeditions: a circumstance which led his sisters to assume, with satisfaction, that he had relaxed his stern rule on that faithful hound’s behalf. “Which makes me glad, after all, that we did bring Luff to London,” said Frederica, adding, with a chuckle: “And also that he chased the cows in the Green Park, and made Jessamy think that a mere female was not to be trusted with him. Nothing else would have lured him away from his books!”
Boy enough to wish to startle his family with his unsuspected prowess, Jessamy had said nothing to them about his new hobby. Once he had perfected his balance, and could feel himself to be master of the Pedestrian Curricle, he meant to ride up to the door, and call his sisters out to watch his skill. There was sometimes a little difficulty in mounting the machine, and it would never do to make a mull of that — particularly if Felix were to be one of his audience. So he spent several hours practising this art; and then, as a final test before showing himself off to his family, boldly penetrated into the more populous part of the town. So well did he manage that he could not resist the temptation to coast down the long slope of Piccadilly, both feet daringly lifted from the flagway. This feat attracted a great deal of attention, some of it admiring, some of it scandalized; and, in the end, very much more attention than Jessamy desired.
A rough-coated retriever was to blame for the disaster. Sedately walking at his master’s heels, this animal no sooner saw the strange vehicle than he took the most violent exception to it, and raced beside it, barking and snapping. Jessamy was too well accustomed to dogs who bounced out to chase any passing carriage to be discomposed by this assault, but Lufra, who had lingered a little way behind to investigate a promising smell, saw that his master was being attacked, and hurled himself to the rescue. The result was inevitable. The dogs, embarking on a fight to the death, cannoned into the Pedestrian Curricle; Jessamy, trying to recover his balance, charged into a man mending chairs, lost control of his machine, and was flung on to the cobbled highway, almost under the hooves of a high-stepping pair harnessed to a landaulet. The coachman was able to swing his horses away, and Jessamy to scramble to his feet, bruised, cut, and considerably shaken, but with no bones broken. A little dazed, and deeply humiliated, he found himself faced with a scene appalling enough to have daunted any sixteen-year-old less stiffly courageous than himself. The sudden swerve of the carriage-horses had dislocated the traffic, and the air was rent by rude, loud voices, uttering accusations and counter-accusations, embellished by threats and strange oaths; the dowager in the landaulet was indulging in a fit of mild vapours; the chair-mender, also picking himself up from the roadway, was claiming enormous damages for his personal injuries and the total wreckage of the chair; and the retriever’s master was furiously shouting for help in separating the dogs. To this task Jessamy turned his attention, and once he had persuaded the irate gentleman to stop belabouring both animals, and to hold his own firmly, he speedily dragged Lufra off. He was just about to stammer an apology when the irate gentleman, stigmatizing Lufra as a savage brute, threw all the blame of the encounter upon that noble hound. That, naturally, made him bite back his apology, and point out that all the blame attached to the retriever, who had wantonly attacked him. “Would you give a souse for a dog that wouldn’t protect his master, sir?” he demanded. “I would not!”