The manling had by this time dismounted. He reached a hand over the hedge—a little gloved paw, small as a girl’s—and offered it in grasp to the gentleman.
“I ask the honour of your acquaintance,” said he. “My sister owes her life to you, I hear. ’Twas an admirable rescue, and more than her deserts.”
He grinned all over his little face.
“She was pryin’, Mr. Tuke—she was pryin’. She didn’t let that cat out of the bag, I’ll warrant. Ever since your comin’ she’d been eatin’ her heart out to get a glimpse of the lord of Wastelands, as they call you.”
“Indeed? I am happy to interest Miss Blythewood. She suffers no hurt from her mishap, I hope?”
“Rest you, rest you. The hurt’s to her vanity, by Gad. ’Twas rich for her to make her bow wrong end up. She’s Miss Royston—my half-sister; and a devilish responsible legacy, by the token. She keeps house for me. I say, you’ll let us be acquainted. D’you breed from your own game-eggs? There’s a pit at Stockbridge kept by old Pollack of the inn. I’ve a duckwing cockerel, March sittin’ would torment ye;—hackles as gold as his mettle. Come Yule, I’ll back him, fifty pounds a side, against the bloodiest rooster you can show.”
So he ran on. His naïve self-importance, half-nullified by the frankness of his boyish confidence, was like a gush of sweet air through the enwrapping gloom of the other’s surroundings.
“We’ll see,” said Mr. Tuke, with a smile—“we’ll see. At present, as you may observe, I’ve my work cut out here for months.”
Sir David craned his neck over the hedge.
“It’s a wilderness, good truth,” said he. “Is that Whimple? He’s a spine-broke artichoke, he is, with a worm at his root. What’s he doin’ there? Sure that’s the hole that Angel near sunk into. You ain’t never—why, you ain’t never dippin’ for that chain of hers?”