“Very well, that’s settled,” said Sherry, giving his horses the office to start again. “What we have to do now is to decide what the devil I’m to do with you when I get you to London.”
“You said you would buy me some new clothes,” Hero reminded him, not without a touch of anxiety.
“I’ll do that, of course, but the thing that’s worrying me a trifle is where you are to sleep tonight,” confessed Sherry. “We shan’t have time to be married today, you know.”
“No, not if we are to go shopping,” agreed Hero. “I could come home with you, couldn’t I?”
“No, certainly not! Wouldn’t do at all!” responded Sherry decidedly. “Besides, I haven’t a home. I mean, I live in a lodging off St James’s Street, and it’s not a situation that would suit you. What’s more, there’s no room for you. I suppose I could take you to Sheringham House, but I shouldn’t think you’d be very comfortable there, with only old Varley and his wife in charge of the place, and everything under holland covers.”
“Oh no! Please don’t take me there!” begged Hero, quite daunted by such a prospect.
Jason, who had been listening with the greatest interest to the conversation, interposed at this point to give it as his opinion that nothing could be more prejudicial to the smooth conduct of the elopement than for Varley, who he described as a tattling old chub who could be counted on to whiddle the whole scrap, to get wind of the lay. The Viscount, who, in common with every other young blood, was fond of interlarding his conversation with cant terms, found no difficulty in understanding this dark warning. On the whole he agreed with it, but he said with some severity that these strictures on an old family retainer had their origin in Varley’s discovery of an attempted theft of his watch-and-chain, some months previously.
“And that puts me in mind of something I forgot!” he exclaimed, turning his head over his shoulder. “Dashed if I wasn’t in such a pucker when I left home that it went clean out of my head! I don’t know what you stole while we were there, but you can’t have been two days in the place without biting something. Hand it over!”
“Keep your glims on the road, guv’nor, keep your glims on the road!” Jason besought him. “I never mills any ken of yours! I’ll cap downright I never did, nor I never will!”
“Jason!” said his lordship, in minatory accents.