“Thousands of 'em, though most of 'em never saw her. I suppose you never saw her then. If you had, you might have done it.”
The duke, sitting with an elbow on each arm of his chair, put the tips of his fine, gouty fingers together and smiled with a far-reaching inclusion of possibilities.
“So I might,” he said; “so I might. My loss entirely—my abominable loss.”
They had reached this point of the argument when the carriage from Stone Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and footman of which equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened to an extent which suggested almost panting breathlessness. It contained Lady Edith and Lady Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated by the news which had brought them horrified from Stone Hover without a moment's delay.
They both ascended in haste and swept in such alarmed anxiety up the terrace steps and through the hall to their father's side that they had barely a polite gasp for Miss Alicia and scarcely saw Tembarom at all.
“Dear Papa!” they cried when he revealed himself in his chair in the library intact and smiling. “How wicked of you, dear! How you have frightened us!”
“I begged you to be good, dearest,” said Lady Edith, almost in tears. “Where was George? You must dismiss him at once. Really—really—”
“He was half a mile away, obeying my orders,” said the duke. “A groom cannot be dismissed for obeying orders. It is the pony who must be dismissed, to my great regret; or else we must overfeed him until he is even fatter than he is and cannot run away.”
Were his arms and legs and his ribs and collar-bones and head quite right? Was he sure that he had not received any internal injury when he fell out of the pony-carriage? They could scarcely be convinced, and as they hung over and stroked and patted him, Tembarom stood aside and watched them with interest. They were the girls he had to please Ann by “getting next to,” giving himself a chance to fall in love with them, so that she'd know whether they were his kind or not. They were nice-looking, and had a way of speaking that sounded rather swell, but they weren't ace high to a little slim, redheaded thing that looked at you like a baby and pulled your heart up into your throat.
“Don't poke me any more, dear children. I am quite, quite sound,” he heard the duke say. “In Mr. Temple Barholm you behold the preserver of your parent. Filial piety is making you behave with shocking ingratitude.”