“He was a person of great discrimination. Not content with that, you pitchforked me into what threatens to be a life-friendship with a pickpocket, to escape from whose advances I am obliged to tramp five miles, carrying a portmanteau which is much heavier than I had supposed possible. It only remains for me to become embroiled in an action for kidnapping, which I feel reasonably assured your aunt will bring against me.”
“Yes, and now I come to think of it, I remember that you said you were going to be married,” said Pen, quite unimpressed by these strictures. “Will she be very angry with you?”
“I hope she will be so very angry that she will wish never to see my face again,” said Sir Richard calmly. “In fact, brat, that reflection so far outweighs all other considerations that I forgive you the rest.”
“I think you are a very odd sort of person,” said Pen. “Why did you ask her to marry you, if you did not wish to?”
“I didn’t. During the past two days that is the only folly I have not committed.”
“Well, why did you mean to ask her, then?”
“You should know.”
“But you are a man! No one could make you do anything you did not choose to do!”
“They came mighty near it. If you had not dropped out of the window into my arms, I have little doubt that I should at this moment be receiving the congratulations of my acquaintance.”
“Well, I must say I do not think you are at all just to me, then, to call me a pestilent child! I saved you—though, indeed, I didn’t know it—from a horrid fate.”