“Oh, pockets to let! To tell you the truth, when I’d paid my fare I’d only a couple of benders left.”
“That I can well believe, but could you not have gone to Mount Street?”
“Yes, but I thought very likely John would be there, and you know what he is, Ned! He would have been prosing on and on, and I don’t mind if you take me to task, but I won’t have John preaching sermons to me, because he’s not my guardian, after all, and it only makes me mad!”
“You are quite out of luck: John is at home.”
“Yes, I know he is: Hitchin told me so. I wish he were not, for he is bound to pull a long face over what has happened, and say I had no business to have done it, just as though he would not have done it himself, which I know he must have, for with all his prosy ways he’s a right one, isn’t he, Ned?”
“Yes; and what is it that he must have done?”
“I was coming to that. I thought, when I reached Wisborough Green, that I would go into the Bull and borrow old Hitchin’s gig to take me up to the Hall. And Jem said he was in the coffee room, and I went in, and he was, and that damned fellow, Eustace, was there too. Everything would have been all right and tight had it not been for that, Ned!”
“Was anyone else in the coffee room?”
“No, only Hitchin and me. Well, I was quite civil to Eustace, and he was too—to me, I mean. And Hitchin said I might borrow the gig, and while the nag was being harnessed would I have some supper? I was devilish hungry, I can tell you, and Hitchin had a rare ham there, so I said I would. And that’s when it all began. Because while I was eating the ham, there Eustace sat, grumbling himself into a fit of the sullens. You know how he does! I wasn’t paying much heed to him, and I would not have, only that he started on you, Ned.” He broke off, and his boyish countenance hardened. Miss Rochdale, curiously watching him, thought that he ground his teeth. “He said such things there was no bearing it!”
“No, I see. Was he foxed, Nicky?”