The village of Colerne was rather less than three miles distant, but long before they had reached it Sir Richard was tired of his portmanteau. “Pen Creed, you are a pestilent child!” he told her.
“Why, what have I done?” she asked, with one of her wide, enquiring looks.
“You have hailed me from my comfortable house—”
“I didn’t! It was you who would come!”
“I was drunk.”
“Well, that was not my fault,” she pointed out.
“Don’t interrupt me! You have made me travel for miles in a conveyance smelling strongly of dirt and onions—”
“That was the fat woman’s husband,” interpolated Pen. “I noticed it myself.”
“No one could have failed to notice it. And I am not partial to onions. You drew a portrait of me which led everyone in the coach to regard me in the light of an oppressor of innocent youth—”
“Not the thin, disagreeable man. He wanted me to be oppressed.”