When the adventurers got back to the Red Lion they found both Nye and Miss Thane awaiting them by the coffee-room fire. Relief at seeing Ludovic safe and sound had its natural effect on Nye, and instead of greeting his graceless charge with solicitude he rated him with such severity that Bundy was moved to expostulate. “Adone-do, Joe!” he said. “There’s no harm done, and we’ve had a nice little mill. Just you take a look at my eye.”
“I am looking at it,” replied Nye. “If I ever meet the man as gave it you I’ll shake him by the hand! I wish he’d blacked ’t’other as well.”
“You’d have kissed him if he had,” remarked Ludovic. “It was Bob Kettering.”
“Bob Kettering!” ejaculated the landlord. “Now, what have you been about, sir? If I ever met such a plaguey—where’s Sir Tristram?”
“Gone home to bed,” yawned Ludovic. “I dare say he’ll be glad to get there; he’s had a full evening, thanks to you, Sally.”
Mr Bundy nodded slowly at Nye. “It would do your heart good to see that cove in a turn-up, Joe. Displays to remarkable advantage, he does. Up to all the tricks.”
“Many’s the time I’ve sparred with Sir Tristram,” replied Nye crushingly. “I don’t doubt he’d be a match for the lot of you, but what I do say, and hold to, is that he hit the wrong man.”
“I don’t know when I’ve took such a fancy to a cove,” said Bundy, disregarding this significant remark. “He gave the valet one in the bone-box, and a tedious wisty castor to the jaw. What he done to young Kettering I don’t know, but from the sounds of it he threw him a rare cross-buttock.”
At this point Miss Thane interrupted him, demanding to be told the full story of the night’s adventure. It seemed to amuse her, and when Sir Tristram arrived at the Red Lion midway through the following morning, she met him with a pronounced twinkle in her eyes.
He saw it, and a rueful smile stole into his own eyes. He took the hand she held out to him, saying: “How do you do? This should be a day of triumph for you.”