"So I did," said Billy. "Damn it!"
"They followed you?" I asked.
"No, they didn't, and I wish they had."
"Then what on earth has happened?"
"What has happened?" Having no hair of his own to speak of, Billy reached forward and ran his fingers through his horse's mane. "I've engaged to get married. That's what has happened."
"Good Lord!"
"To a female Methody, in a Quaker bonnet. I had no idea of any such thing when I followed her. She was sittin' on the first milestone out of Falmouth and jabbin' her heel into the dust, like a person in a pet. First of all, when I spoke to her, she wouldn't tell what had annoyed her; but later on it turned out she had come expectin' to be made a martyr of, and everything was lookin' keenly that way until Sir John came and interfered, as she put it."
"And she said," suggested Mr. Fett, "that she didn't mind what man could do unto her?"
"The very words she used, sir!" said Billy, his brow clearing as a prisoner's will when counsel supplies him with a defence.
"And, when you took her at her word, like a Christian woman she turned the other cheek?"