“That’s right,” agreed the large man.
“If the Company was to hear of it he would be turned off, and very rightly!” said the clerk, sniffing. “The behaviour of these stage-coachmen is becoming a scandal.”
“I’m sure there’s no call for people to get nasty if a man falls behind his time-bill a little,” said the woman. “Live and let live, that’s what I say.”
Her husband assented to this in his usual fashion. The coach lurched forward again, and Pen said, under cover of the noise of the wheels and the horses’ hooves: “You kept on telling me that you were drunk, and now I see that you were. I was afraid you would regret coming with me.”
Sir Richard raised his head from his hands. “Drunk I most undoubtedly must have been, but I regret nothing except the brandy. When does this appalling vehicle reach Bristol?”
“It isn’t one of the fast coaches, you know. They don’t engage to cover much above eight miles an hour. I think we ought to be in Bristol by eleven o’clock. We seem to stop such a number of times, though. Do you mind very much?”
He looked down at her. “Do you?”
“To tell you the truth,” she confided, “not a bit! I am enjoying myself hugely. Only I don’t want you to be made uncomfortable all for my sake. I quite see that you are sadly out-of-place in a stage-coach.”
“My dear child, you had nothing whatever to do with my present discomfort, believe me. As for my being out-of-place, what, pray, are you?”
The dimples peeped. “Oh, I am only a scrubby school-boy, after all!”