"Softly," said I, "softly, gaffer. This is your niece, I believe," nodding over my arm to miss.
"Well," he snarled, "as she is mine and not yours I can do what I like with her."
"Oh! is that how the wind blows?" said I. "Then, sink me! but I shall have to go to school again to learn morals. But there is one thing I have no need to learn again, and that's how to knock sense and discretion into a thick head," said I, meaningly, and at the same time I threw the bridle over Calypso's ears and stood free before the old villain.
He looked at me a moment, the flame of the candle wagging before his face, and the grease guttering down the candlestick. "You do not understand, sir," he said in a quieter voice. "I have to give my niece lessons; I have to teach her by severity; but since it is probable that she has been sufficiently frightened by this night's adventure, and come to reason, let her enter." And so saying, he stepped back and held the door wide.
That he was of a savage, uncontrollable temper was evident, but I had not reckoned with the old bear's cunning, and I vow I was to blame for it. So old a hand as Dick Ryder should not have been caught by so simple a trick. Yet he was miss's uncle, and how was I to suspect him so deeply? At anyrate, the facts are that, on seeing him alter so reasonably, and step back with the invitation on his lips and in his bearing, I too stepped back from the doorway to leave way for miss to enter. Then of a sudden bang goes the door to, shaking the very walls of the house, and a great key is turned on the inside, groaning rustily.
I will confess I felt blank, but I recovered in a moment, when out of the window above the old rascal stuck his head.
"Let her go back to her lover!" he says with a sneer. "Or maybe you can take her yourself. I want no soiled pieces in a Christian house," and then the head was withdrawn, the window shut tight, and the house was plunged in darkness.
You may suppose how this usage annoyed me, who am not wont to be treated in so scurvy a fashion, or to come out of any contest so shabbily. I was, on the instant, for flying at the door and employing barkers and point forthwith, but it is not wise to leap too soon with your eyes shut, and so I held my temper and my tongue, only showing my teeth in an ugly grin as I turned to Mrs Nelly.
"Why," says I, "the old buck has said the truth. And there is something in his whimsies after all. It seems that George and I must fight or toss for you, my dear." You must remember that I had not seen her face all this time, for all the streaming candle the old gentleman carried, but I gathered that she was in distress from the note of her voice, which trembled.