“I don’t care,” she said. “I was only thirteen, and he had saved my life.”
“You didn’t do it again, my dear, I hope, when you met him in the street to-day.”
“Of course not!” she exclaimed indignantly. “The idea of such a thing!”
“Very well, let this be a lesson to you not to enquire too strictly into such matters.”
“Ah! I will bear it in mind,” she said.
“I can assure you, Alice, that it was a perfectly friendly kiss. She was engaged to be married to a young soldier who was a prisoner at Porchester, and during the past week I have been employed in setting him free, as you will hear presently. I promised her I would do so if possible, and of course I kept my word.”
“What! you, an English officer, set a French prisoner free! I am shocked!” Mr. Palethorpe said.
“I would have tried to set twenty of them free if twenty of their sweethearts had united to get me away from prison.”
They laughed heartily at the story of his escape as a pedlar, and were intensely interested in his account of the manner in which he succeeded in getting a despatch from the agent of the British Government at Amsterdam. He continued the narrative until his arrival in England.
“Now we shall hear, I suppose, how this British officer perpetrated an act of treason against His Most Gracious Majesty.”