Chapter I
Newark was left behind and the post-chaise-and-four entered on a stretch of flat country which offered little to attract the eye, or occasion remark. Miss Taverner withdrew her gaze from the landscape and addressed her companion, a fair youth who was lounging in his corner of the chaise somewhat sleepily surveying the back of the nearest post-boy. “How tedious it is to be sitting still for so many hours at a stretch!” she remarked. “When do we reach Grantham, Perry?”
Her brother yawned. “Lord, I don’t know! It was you who would go to London.”
Miss Taverner made no reply to this, but picked up a Traveller’s Guide from the seat beside her, and began to flutter the leaves over. Young Sir Peregrine yawned again, and observed that the new pair of wheelers, put in at Newark, were good-sized strengthy beasts, very different from the last pair, which had both of them been touched in the wind.
Miss Taverner was deep in the Traveller’s Guide, and agreed to this without raising her eyes from the closely printed page.
She was a fine young woman, rather above the average height, and had been used for the past four years to hearing herself proclaimed a remarkably handsome girl. She could not, however, admire her own beauty, which was of a type she was inclined to despise. She had rather have had black hair; she thought the fairness of her gold curls insipid. Happily, her brows and lashes were dark, and her eyes, which were startlingly blue (in the manner of a wax doll, she once scornfully told her brother), had a directness and a fire which gave a great deal of character to her face. At first glance one might write her down a mere Dresden china miss, but a second glance would inevitably discover the intelligence in her eyes, and the decided air of resolution in the curve of her mouth. She was dressed neatly, but not in the first style of fashion, in a plain round gown of French cambric, frilled round the neck with scolloped lace, and a close mantle of twilled sarcenet. A poke-bonnet of basket-willow with a striped velvet ribbon rather charmingly framed her face, and a pair of York tan gloves were drawn over her hands, and buttoned tightly round her wrists.
Her brother, who had resumed his slumberous scrutiny of the post-boy’s back, resembled her closely. His hair was more inclined to brown, and his eyes less deep in colour than hers, but he must always be known for her brother. He was a year younger than Miss Taverner, and, either from habit or carelessness, was very much in the habit of permitting her to order things as she chose.
“It is fourteen miles from Newark to Grantham,” announced Miss Taverner, raising her eyes from the Traveller’s Guide. “I had not thought it had been so far.” She bent over the book again. “It says here—it is Kearsley’s Entertaining Guide, you know, which you procured for me in Scarborough—that it is a neat and populous town on the River Witham. It is supposed to have been a Roman station, by the remains of a castle—which have been dug up. I must say, I should like to explore there if we have the time, Perry.”
“Oh, lord, you know ruins always look the same!” objected Sir Peregrine, digging his hands into the pockets of his buckskin breeches. “I tell you what it is, Judith: if you’re set on poking about all the castles on the way we shall be a full week on the road. I’m all for pushing forward to London.”
“Very well,” submitted Miss Taverner, closing the Traveller’s Guide, and laying it on the seat. “We will bespeak an early breakfast at the George, then, and you must tell them at what hour you will have the horses put to.”