The Captain’s first visitor, the following morning, was Rose, who stepped briskly into the toll-house soon after nine o’clock, cast a critical eye over Mrs. Skeffling’s handiwork, wrested from her clutches the torn shirt, and sallied forth into the garden in search of Captain Staple. She found him chopping wood. He greeted her with his disarming smile, and a cheerful good-morning. He then listened with becoming meekness to a comprehensive scold, which, although apparently aimed at the unsuitability of his occupation and his attire, was, as he perfectly understood, a punishment for having dared to discover the trend of her maidenly affections.
“But chopping wood is capital exercise!” he said.
“Capital exercise indeed! I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s coming to! And I’ll thank you, Mr. Jack, not to go sending messages to me that you’ll stable Mr. Chirk’s mare to please me! I never did! I declare I was never so mortified! I should be a deal better pleased if Mr. Chirk would take himself off, and not come bothering me any more, for I’m a respectable woman, and keep company with a highwayman I will not!”
“No, I do think he must abandon that way of life,” agreed John.
“It’s nothing to me what he does!” said Rose.
“Poor Chirk!”
Her face puckered. She whisked out her handkerchief and rather fiercely blew her nose. “It’s no manner of use, Mr. Jack!” she said, in a muffled tone. “You ought to know better than to encourage him! I can’t and I won’t marry a man who might be carried off to gaol any moment!”
“Certainly not: you would never know a day’s peace! Besides, it’s not at all the thing. But he doesn’t expect you to marry him under such circumstances as that, does he?”
She sat down on the chopping-block, and wiped her eyes. “No, he says he’ll settle down, and live honest, farming. But talking pays no toll, sir, and where is the money to come from to buy a cottage, let alone a farm?”
The Captain refrained from telling her that Mr. Chirk proposed to found his career as an honest farmer on the theft of some traveller’s strong-box, and merely said: “Would you marry him, if he were not a highwayman?”