“Well, I’m going to Kingswood myself,” said the farmer. “You can get up alongside me in the gig, if you like. You’ll likely catch up with the stage there.”
She accepted this offer gratefully, for she thought that even if she did not succeed in overtaking the stage she would be safer from Mr Gudgeon at Kingswood than in Bristol. Happily, however, the farmer was driving a fast-trotting young horse, and they reached the main London road before the heavy stage had drawn out of the town. The farmer set Pen down in Kingswood, at the door of the inn, and having ascertained that the coach had not yet called there, bade her a cheerful farewell, and drove off.
Feeling that she had escaped disaster by no more than a hair’s breadth, Pen sat down upon the bench outside the inn to await the arrival of the stage. It was late in coming, and the guard, when Pen handed him her ticket, seemed to take it as a personal affront that she had not boarded it in Bristol. He told her, with malign satisfaction, that her cloak-bag had been left behind at the “Talbot’ Inn, but after a good deal of grumbling he admitted that she had a right to a seat in the coach, and let down the steps for her to mount into it. She squeezed herself into a place between a fat man, and a woman nursing a peevish infant; the door was shut, the steps let up again, and the vehicle resumed its ponderous journey to London.
Chapter 14
Sir Richard Wyndham was not an early riser, but he was roused from sleep at an unconscionably early hour upon the morning of Pen’s flight by the boots, who came into his room with a small pile of his linen, which had been laundered in the inn, and his top-boots, and told him diffidently that he was wanted belowstairs.
Sir Richard groaned, and enquired what time it was. With even greater diffidence, the boots said that it was not quite eight o’clock.
“What the devil?” exclaimed Sir Richard, bending a pained glance upon him.
“Yes, sir,” agreed the boots feelingly, “but it’s that Major Daubenay, sir, in such a pucker as you never did see!”
“Oh!” said Sir Richard. “It is, is it? The devil fly away with Major Daubenay!”
The boots grinned, but awaited more precise instructions. Sir Richard groaned again, and sat up. “You think I ought to get up, do you? Bring me my shaving water, then.”