“Sporting the blunt!” she retaliated, casting a challenging look at him to see how he took this dashing phrase.
“Exactly so!” he said.
A gurgle of laughter escaped her. “How absurd you are! Are you never serious, Captain Staple?”
“Why, yes, sometimes, Miss Stornaway!” She smiled, and drove on for a few moments without speaking. She was not, he thought, shy, but there was a little constraint in her manner, which had been absent from it on the previous day. After a pause, she said, as though she felt it incumbent upon her to make some remark: “I hope you do not dislike to be driven by a female, sir?”
“Not when the female handles the ribbons as well as you do, ma’am,” he replied.
“Thank you! It needs no particular skill to drive Squirrel, but I was always accounted a good whip. I can drive a tandem,” she added, with a touch of pride. “My grandfather taught me.”
“Didn’t your grandfather win a curricle race against Sir John Lade once?”
“Yes, indeed he did! But that was long ago.” A tiny sigh accompanied the words, and as though to cover it, she said, in a rallying tone: “I had meant to pass you off as the stable boy, you know, but you are so smart today I see it will not do!”
He was wearing his riding-coat and topboots, and his neckcloth was arranged with military neatness. There was nothing of the dandy in his appearance, but his coat was well cut, and, in striking contrast to Henry Stornaway’s buckish friend, he looked very much the gentleman.
He stretched out one leg, and grimaced at it. “I did my best,” he admitted, “but, lord, how right my man was about these leathers of mine! He gave me to understand no one could clean them but himself. I don’t know how that may be, but I certainly can’t! My boots are a disgrace to me, too, but that might be the fault of Brean’s blacking.”