"We can run away, but he can not. I became very angry when I was there, both with her ladyship and that pestilential old clergyman, and told them both pretty much what I thought. I have the comfort of knowing that I have two bitter enemies in the house."
"Can they hurt you?"
"Not in the least,—except in this, that they can teach those little boys to regard me as an enemy. I would fain have had my brothers left to me. Mr. Greenwood, and I must now say her ladyship also, are nothing to me."
It was not till after dinner that the story was told about Crocker. "Think what I must have felt when I was told that a clerk from the Post Office wanted to see me!"
"And then that brute Crocker was shown in?" asked Hampstead.
"Do you really know him?"
"Know him! I should rather think so. Don't you remember him at Castle Hautboy?"
"Not in the least. But he told me that he had been there."
"He never would leave me. He absolutely drove me out of the country because he would follow me about when we were hunting. He insulted me so grievously that I had to turn tail and run away from him. What did he want of me?"
"To intercede for him with George Roden."