“Am I? Then let us say intrepid!”
She sighed. “I wish I were! The case is that I am a wretched coward.”
“Your father gives you quite another character.”
“I don’t fear fences.”
“What, then?”
“People—some people! To—to be slain by unkindness.”
He looked at her with a slight frown; but before he could ask her to explain what she meant they were interrupted by Alice, who came in, stamping her feet to rid her pattens of the clogged snow, and followed by an ancient with very few teeth but a crafty eye. This individual she introduced as a nasty, twitty old maw-worm, disclosing that he wouldn’t sell his pig until convinced that it would be eaten by a duke, and not by a Captain Sharp, masquerading as such.
Considerably taken aback, for he had never before had his credentials doubted, much less been taken for a Captain Sharp, Sylvester said: “Well, I don’t know how I should be able to convince him! Unless he’d like one of my visiting cards?”
But this Mr. Shap rejected, informing the company that he wasn’t a lettered man. He apparently felt this to be a triumph, for he then fell into a fit of cackling mirth. Assured by Phoebe that Sylvester was a duke, he told her, but kindly, that she had been took in by a lot of slum. “You don’t want to listen to this great fussock here, missie!” he said, jerking his thumb at Alice. “She’s got a brother what’s dicked in the nob, and a proper jobbernoll she is! Ah!”
He then nodded his head cunningly several times, and demanded to be told who had ever heard of a duke dressing his horses. But by this time Sylvester had taken the purse from his coat-pocket, and said briefly: “What’s the figure?”
Mr. Shap, with great promptness, named a price which drew a shriek of scandalized wrath from Alice. She begged Sylvester not to be choused out of his money by a wicked old lick-penny; but Sylvester, who was tired of Mr. Shap, dropped three sovereigns into his gnarled hand, and told him to be off. Such openhanded conduct caused Mr. Shap to dang himself if it weren’t a duke after all; and after giving Sylvester a fatherly admonition not to allow himself to be clerked by Widow Scaling, he hobbled off, calling, in a cracked, senile voice, to Will to come and fetch away the pig.
“Well,” said Alice, preparing to follow him, “I’m proper set about he should have behaved like a smidge, but one thing’s sure, your honour! with you paying him so handsome he knows you are a duke, and so he’ll tell everyone.” She nodded, her eyes sparkling with joyful anticipation. “Happen we’ll have ’em all up to the tap today, wishful for to see you with their own eyes!” she told Sylvester. “Why, there’s been nothing like it, not since we had the girl with two heads putting up here! Her dad was taking of her to London, being wishful to put her into a big fair they do be having there. We had half Hungerford here, as well as Kintbury, and not a drop of liquor left in the house by ten o’clock.”
The fascinated horror with which Sylvester listened to these artless confidences had long since proved to be too much for Phoebe’s gravity. Alice, grinning sympathetically upon her mirth, went off to supervise the transport of Mr. Shap’s pig; and Sylvester demanded, with some asperity, whether his attractions were rated above or below those of a freak.
“Oh, below!” Phoebe answered, wiping her streaming eyes. “For you are not in yourself remarkable, you know! Your oddity is in being out of place. I daresay, had you been putting up at the Pelican, your presence in the district wouldn’t have aroused the least interest.”
“How much I wish we were all of us at the Pelican!” he exclaimed. “Only think how different our lot would be! No, don’t let us think of it!”
“I don’t mean to,” responded Phoebe cheerfully. “The Pelican would not do for me at all, in such a situation. But if Keighley is better tomorrow, I shouldn’t wonder at it if you were able to reach Speenhamland. It can’t be many miles ahead, after all!”
“And abandon you and Thomas to your fates? If that’s the opinion you hold of me I am able to understand your reluctance to receive my addresses, Miss Marlow!”
She blushed fierily, for although Tom had warned her of his indiscretion she had been encouraged by Sylvester’s previous manner to believe that he would not refer to it. “I beg pardon! Of course I did not—it wasn’t—I mean, it was all a stupid mistake, wasn’t it?” she stammered.
Venturing to look up into his face she saw that his eyes were gleaming with mockery; and she could not doubt that he was enjoying her discomfiture. But as resentment rose in her breast the malice vanished from his expression; and she perceived that he really had got an enchanting smile. This was surprising. She had not before encountered that engaging look; and a moment earlier there had been no trace of it. She was suspicious of it, and yet could not help responding to it.
“Yes, just a stupid mistake!” he said reassuringly. “Shall I promise not to pay my addresses to you? I am perfectly ready to do so, if it will make you more comfortable.”
But she only laughed at this, and got up, saying that she had no longer any fears on that head. She went away then, and when he saw her next it was an hour later, in Tom’s room, polishing with a scrap of sandpaper the spillikins Tom was cleverly whittling from some wood begged from Mrs. Scaling. Tom looked up, smiling, and said: “Can you play spillikins, sir? I was used to be a dab at the game, and am issuing a challenge to all comers!”
“I don’t fear you,” responded Sylvester, handing him a large pewter tankard. “Home-brewed, Thomas—the best thing we’ve yet had here!—Your skill may be superior, but I’ll swear I’m the more in practice! Unless you have young brothers and sisters, in which case I may hedge off a trifle.
“No, I haven’t,” grinned Tom. “Have you?”
“No, but I have frequently played with my nephew,” Sylvester replied.
His attention was just then diverted by a kick on the door, followed by a demand from Will Scaling to be admitted. He turned to open the door, and so did not see the looks of consternation which his words brought to his young friends’ faces. By the time he had foiled an attempt by Will to dump a heavy nuncheon-tray down on Tom’s legs they had revived sufficiently from the shock of discovering that he had a nephew to be able to meet his casual glance with the appearance at least of composure. They were granted no opportunity for an exchange of more than looks until later in the day, for Sylvester returned with Phoebe to Tom’s room after their nuncheon, and only left it when it became time to attend again to the horses. Mrs. Scaling having unearthed from the recesses of a cupboard a pack of somewhat greasy playing-cards the beleaguered travellers were not restricted to spillikins or paper games, but embarked on several desperate gambling ventures, using dried peas for counters, and managing the cards and the bets of all the imaginary persons created by them to make up the correct number of gamesters. This was the sort of fooling that might have amused them for a few minutes, but Phoebe’s talent for endowing her creations with names and characteristics invested the nonsense with wit; and when Sylvester, not slow to follow her lead, invented two eccentrics on his own account the game rapidly became a sort of charade, exercising the histrionic ability of the two players, and keeping Tom, who did not aspire to such heights, in a continuous chuckle. But although Tom laughed he thought it a dangerous diversion, for every now and then Phoebe could not resist indulging her genius for mimicry. Tom recognized several characters from The Lost Heir; he was unacquainted with the originals, but to judge by Sylvester’s swift response Phoebe hit them off very recognizably.
“For the lord’s sake take care what you’re about!” Tom warned her, as soon as Sylvester had left the room. “If he should read your book I wouldn’t wager a groat against the chance of his recalling all this mummery of yours, and then putting two and two together, for he’s no fool! You know, Phoebe, I do think you should make a push to alter that book! I mean, after the way he has behaved to us it seems the shabbiest thing to make him out a villain! I can’t think why you should have done so, either, or have supposed him to be insufferably proud. Why, he hasn’t the least height in his manner!”