“I have not the slightest desire to help Piers, who seems to me to be behaving in a most reprehensible fashion.”
“Oh no, indeed he cannot help it! I see that I had better tell you their whole story.”
Without giving Sir Richard time to protest, she launched into a rapid and colourful account of the young lovers’ tribulations. The account, being freely embellished with her own comments, was considerably involved, and Sir Richard several times interrupted it to crave enlightenment on some obscure point. At the end of it, he remarked without any noticeable display of enthusiasm: “A most affecting history. For myself, I find the theme of Montague and Capulet hopelessly outmoded, however.”
“Well, I have made up my mind to it that there is only one thing for them to do. They must elope.”
Sir Richard, who had been playing with his quizzing-glass, let it fall, and spoke with startling severity. “Enough of this! Now, understand me, brat, I will engage to fob off the irate father, but there it must end! This extremely tedious pair of lovers may elope to-morrow for anything I care, but I will have no hand in it, and I will not permit you to have a hand in it either. Do you see?”
Pen looked speculatively at him. There was no smile visible in his eyes, which indeed looked much sterner than she had ever believed they could. Plainly, he would not lend any support to her scheme of eloping with Miss Daubenay herself. It would be better, decided Pen, to tell him nothing about this. But she was not one to let a challenge rest unanswered, and she replied with spirit: “You may do as you choose, but you have no right to tell me what I must or must not do! It is not in the least your affair.”
“It is going to be very much my affair,” replied Sir Richard.
“I don’t understand what you can possibly mean by saying anything so silly!”
“I daresay you don’t, but you will.”
“Well, we won’t dispute about that,” said Pen pacifically.