“No game at all!” said Sir Richard. “You have a fugitive aboard, and when I have taken him into custody, you are at liberty to proceed on your way.”
“Ho, I am, am I?” said the coachman, nonplussed, but by no means mollified. “Fine doings on the King’s Highway! Ah, and so you’ll find afore you’re much older!”
One of the inside passengers, a red-faced man with very bushy whiskers, poked his head out of the window to discover the reason for the unexpected halt; the guard climbed down from the roof to argue with Sir Richard; and Pen, squashed between a fat farmer, and a woman with a perpetual sniff, had a sudden fear that she had been overtaken by the Bow Street Runner. The sound of the guard’s voice, saying: “There, and if I didn’t suspicion him from the werry moment I set eyes on him at Kingswood!” did nothing to allay her alarms. She turned a white, frightened face towards the door, just as it was pulled open, and the steps let down.
The next instant, Sir Richard’s tall, immaculate person filled the opening, and Pen, uttering an involuntary sound between a squeak and a whimper, turned first red, and then white, and managed to utter the one word: “No!”
“Ah!” said Sir Richard briskly. “So there you are! Out you come, my young friend!”
“Well, I never did in all my life!” gasped the woman beside Pen. “Whatever has he been and gone and done, sir?”
“Run away from school,” replied Sir Richard, without a moment’s hesitation.
“I haven’t! It isn’t t-true!” stammered Pen. “I won’t go with you, I w-won’t!”
Sir Richard, leaning into the coach, and grasping her hand, said: “Oh, won’t you, by Jove? Don’t you dare to defy me, you—brat!”
“Here, guv’nor, steady!” expostulated a kindly man in the far corner. “I don’t know when I’ve taken more of a fancy to a lad, and there’s no call for you to bully him, I’m sure! Dare say there’s many of us have wanted to run away from school in our time, eh?”