Mr. Plowden saw that he had made a fatal mistake; but it was too late to deny it.
“To a certain extent,” he said, sulkily. “That young ruffian told me that I was not a gentleman.”
“Really! Of course that was unpleasant. But how glad you must feel that you missed him, especially as his back was turned! It would have looked so bad for a clergyman to be had up for assault, or worse, wouldn’t it?”
Mr. Plowden turned pale, and bit his lip. He began to feel that he was in the power of this quiet, dignified young woman, and the feeling was not pleasant.
“And it would not look very well if the story got round here, would it? I mean even if it was not known that you hit at him with the stick when he was not looking, because, you see, it would seem so absurd! The idea of a clergyman more than six feet high being shaken like a naughty child! I suppose that Mr. Jones is very strong.”
Mr. Plowden winced beneath her mockery, and rising, seized his hat; but she motioned him back to his chair.
“Don’t go yet,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that you ought to be much obliged to me for thinking of all this for you. I thought that it would be painful to you to have the story all over the country-side, so I nipped it in the bud.”
Mr. Plowden groaned in spirit. If these were the results of a story nipped in the bud, what would its uninjured bloom be like?
“Who told you? “he asked, brusquely. “Jones went away.”
“Yes. How glad you must be, by the way, that he is gone! But it was not Mr. Jones, it was a person who oversaw the difference of opinion. No, never mind who it was; I have found means to silence that person.”