“Yes, yes! but—oh, there’s a two-tailed monster! I know it is the tiger! It is moving! I shall die if you take me any farther.”
“Plague upon your folly, madam! It is only the elephant,” said a gruffer, rude voice.
“Oh, it is dreadful! ’Tis like a mountain! I can’t! Oh no, I can’t!”
“Come, madam, you have brought us thus far, you must come on, and not make fools of us all,” said Charles’s voice. “There’s nothing to hurt you.”
Anne, understanding the distress and perplexity, here turned back to the passage into the court, and began persuasively to explain to little Mrs. Archfield that the tiger was dead, and only a skin, and that the elephant was the mildest of beasts, till she coaxed forward that small personage, who had of course never really intended to turn back, supported and guarded as she was by her husband, and likewise by a tall, glittering figure in big boots and a handsome scarlet uniform and white feather who claimed her attention as he strode into the court. “Ha! Mistress Anne and the Doctor on my life. What, don’t you know me?”
“Master Sedley Archfield!” said the Doctor; “welcome home, sir! ’Tis a meeting of old acquaintance. You and this gentleman are both so much altered that it is no wonder if you do not recognise one another at once.”
“No fear of Mr. Perry Oakshott not being recognised,” said Sedley Archfield, holding out his hand, but with a certain sneer in his rough voice that brought Peregrine’s eyebrows together. “Kenspeckle enough, as the fools of Whigs say in Scotland.”
“Are you long from Scotland, sir?” asked Dr. Woodford, by way of preventing personalities.
“Oh ay, sir; these six months and more. There’s not much more sport to be had since the fools of Cameronians have been pretty well got under, and ’tis no loss to be at Hounslow.”
“And oh, what a fright!” exclaimed Mrs. Archfield, catching sight of the heiress. “Keep her away! She makes me ill.”