“Well,” said Chirk, quite unperturbed by this severity, “seeing as you was aiming to marry Miss Nell, Soldier, it seemed to me as you’d be a deal better off without a Queer Nabs like him to call cousins with you!”
“I shall be, of course,” admitted the Captain frankly. “I daresay I should have been obliged, for my wife’s sake, to have extricated him a good few times from the consequences of his own folly. But you have made me feel that I’ve betrayed the Squire’s trust, Jerry, and I don’t like it!”
“You’ve got no call to be hipped over that,” Chirk told him. “By what Rose has told me, Squire would have said I done right. He wouldn’t ha’ cared how soon his precious grandson was booked, so long as he didn’t kick up no nasty dust!”
The Captain, thinking of the Squire, smiled reluctantly. “I suppose he wouldn’t.”
“Besides,” said Chirk, stripping his greatcoat from Mollie’s back, and shrugging himself into it, “while we was about it, it would have been a crying shame not to have made a regular sweep of it! Don’t you go napping your bib over that young weasel, Soldier, because the only difference twixt him and Coate was that he was hen-hearted, and Coate weren’t!” He hoisted himself into the saddle. “I daresay the cob won’t founder under you, if you throw your leg acrost him,” he observed, handing this sturdy animal’s bridle to John. “ ’Least, not before we get back to the Redbreast, though I wouldn’t ask him to carry you further, me being a merciful man.”
“Did you have any trouble with Stogumber?” asked John, mounting the cob.
“Not to speak of, I didn’t, excepting how to get him over a hedge, him not being in the habit of it. If it’s all one to you, Soldier, we’ll take him back by way of the road.” He said over his shoulder, as the mare moved forward: “He ain’t a bad cove—for a trap! Him and me got talking while we was waiting for you and Stornaway, and I’m bound to say he’s got a lot of useful ideas in his noddle. We got it settled all right and tight how I come to be mixed up in this business, and a rare Banbury story it is! ’Cos the Redbreast don’t want it known what my lay is, and no more I don’t neither.” He looked over his shoulder again. “Lordy, to think I’ll be setting up respectable, with Rose, before the cat can lick her ear! When the Redbreast told me how much gelt them chubs in Lunnon will pay down for getting the chests back, it made me feel pretty near as queer as Dick’s hatband, ’cos I wasn’t expecting it, nothing like it, I wasn’t! Seems they pays ten percent, which is very handsome of ’em, I will say. And I owes it all to you, Soldier, which is why I sent Stornaway to roost, not being able to think of nothing else I could do for you!”
This made John laugh; and he was still chuckling when they rejoined Stogumber by the cavern-mouth. That gentleman, receiving his mount from him, said austerely that he was happy to see him in such high gig, and had little doubt that he would find something to amuse him, even if he were on his way to the gallows. “Which, from what I seen of you, is where you’ll find yourself one of these days!” he added, climbing laboriously into the saddle, and groping for his stirrups. “And I ain’t going to pull this nag over any more banks, so mark that!”
“No, no, we’ll follow the road!” John said soothingly. “Let’s be off! I don’t know for how long we were in the cavern, but it seems an age since I entered it. I left Ben to mind the gate, too, so I daresay I am quite in his black books by this time.”
But when they came within sight of the toll-gate there was no sign of Ben. An animated group was gathered about the immaculate person of Mr. Babbacombe, and it included, besides a spare man in his Sunday blacks, a burly farmer, driving a cow with her calf; a groom in charge of a gig; Rose Durward; and Nell. Most of these persons appeared to be engaged in acrimonious discussion, but the approach, beyond the gate, of a cavalcade, consisting of three riders and two led horses, caused them to abate their strife. They all turned to see who could be coming to the pike in such force.