“A——?”
“A very beautiful gentleman. I wish you’d been there, Cousin Betty. You’d have liked him too.”
Then Cousin Bet also slapped her. And Elfrida wished more than ever that she had some poetry ready for the Mouldiwarp.
The next day’s journey was as bumpety as the first, and Elfrida got very tired of the whole business. “Oh, I wish something would happen!” she said.
It was a very much longer day too, and the dusk had fallen while still they were on the road. The sun had set red behind black trees, and brown twilight was thickening all about, when at a cross-roads, a man in a cloak and mask on a big black horse suddenly leaped from a hedge, stooped from his saddle, opened the carriage door, caught Elfrida with one hand by the gathers of her full travelling coat (he must have been frightfully strong, and so must the gathers), set her very neatly and quite comfortably on the saddle before him, and said—
“Hand up your valuables, please—or I shoot the horses. And keep your barkers low, for if you aim at me you shoot the child. And if you shoot my horse, the child and I fall together.”
But even as he spoke through his black mask, he wheeled the horse so that his body was a shield between her and the pistols of the serving-men.
“What do you want?” Cousin Bet’s voice was quite squeaky. “We have no valuables; we are plain country people, travelling home to our farm.”
“I want the collar of pearls,” said he, “and the pomander, and the little gold watch, and the jewels that have been reset.”
Then Elfrida knew who he was.