“Alack!” sighed Mr Merriot, “I feel all a woman.”
“Oh Prue, my Prue, it’s a Whig with a sober mind! Will you take it to husband?”
“I suppose you will be merry, Robin. Do you imagine me in love on two hours’ acquaintance? Ah, you’re jealous of the gentleman’s inches. Said I not so?”
“My inches, child, stand me in good stead. I believe it’s the small men have the wits. My compliments on the sword-play.”
“At least the old gentleman taught me a trick or two worth the knowing,” placidly said the lady, and pulled up her coat sleeve to show a stained shirt. “The last glass went down my arm,” she said, smiling.
Her brother nodded. “Well, here’s been work enough for an evening,” he remarked. “I await the morrow. Give you good-night, child, and pray dream of your mammoth.”
“In truth I need a mammoth to match me,” said Madam Prudence. “Pray dream of your midget, Robin.”
She went away humming a snatch of an old song. It was apparent to her that her brother frowned upon the morrow, but she had a certain placidity that went well with her inches, and looked upon her world with calm untroubled eyes.
The truth was she was too well used to a precarious position to be easily disturbed, and certainly too used to an exchange of personality with Robin to boggle over her present situation. She had faith in her own wits: these failing her she had a rueful dependence on the ingenuity of her sire. Impossible to tread the paths of his cutting without developing an admiration for the gentleman’s guile. Prudence regarded him with affection, but some irony. She admitted his incomprehensibility with a laugh, but it did not disturb her. She danced to his piping, but it is believed she lacked the adventurous spirit. Now Robin might fume at the mystery with which the father chose to wrap himself about, but Robin enjoyed a chequered career, and had an impish dare-devilry that led him into more scrapes than the old gentleman devised. Withal he surveyed the world with a seriousness that Prudence lacked. He had enthusiasms, and saw life as something more than the amusing pageant Prudence thought it.
It seemed he had taken this last, unlucky venture to heart. To be sure, he had had a closer view of it than his sister. She supposed it was his temperament made him enthusiastic for a venture entered into in a spirit of adventure only, and at the father’s bidding. She remembered he had wept after Culloden, with his head in her lap at the old house in Perth — wept in a passion of fury and heartbreak, and dashed away the tears with an oath, and a vow that he hated lost causes. To Prudence it was a matter of indifference whether Stewart Charles or German George sat the throne; she suspected her sire of a like indifference, discounting heroics. They were swept into this rebellion for — God knew what cause; they were entangled in its meshes before they knew it. That was Mr Colney’s way. He made a fine speech, and it seemed they were all Jacobites. A year before they were entirely French, at Florence; before that there was a certain gaming house at Frankfort, whose proprietor of a sudden swept off his son and daughter to dip fingers in a pie of M. de Saxe’s making.