“Then, sir,” says I, “I will be mentioned in it fully as is my due. I did the deed, and I will take the recompense. If its reward is to be the Tower, I will claim it as my own. Therefore erase your name from this document, my lord, and insert the name of her who hath duly earned her place there.”
“Nay, Bab, not so,” says he. “I gave the soldiers of the King my hospitality, and now they must give me his.”
“Which they never shall,” cries I, with my cheeks a-flaming. “I will go and see the Captain and insist upon his keeping to the truth. Oh, these politics! ’Tis well said that there is no such thing as rectitude in politics. But in the meantime I will draw the teeth out of this wicked document to prevent it committing harm.”
And under the nose of its custodian I screwed the paper into a ball, and planted it calmly in the blaze. Having watched it thoroughly consumed, I swept from the room to beard the Captain, and left “laughter holding both his sides” in the person of his lordship, who quoted Horace at me or some other, whom I have not sufficient Latin to locate or to determine. ’Twas about the Sun-God Apollo and his tender sentiments towards some deity with a cheek of fire.
I found my worshipful friend the Captain in occupation of the library. He was dressed rakishly in lavender and in a peruke that flourishes most in Chelsey and such-like Southern places. His shattered knee was strapped upon a board, and though his face was pinched with pain, it was anything but woeful when he gazed up from the writing-table at which he sat, and beheld me glide into the room.
He was monstrous busy with a full-feathered quill upon a page of foolscap, the twin to the one to which my papa had signed his name, and that had been so considerately burned.
I asked him of his hurt, and he questioned me of mine. Both, it seemed, were recovering excellently well. Then says I with that simplicity which is perhaps the most insidious weapon of all that I possess:
“My dear Captain, I have just seen a paper identical to the one you are now engaged upon, in the room of my papa. I call it very thoughtful of you to suppress my name in the manner that you do. Am I to suppose?” I inquired, with an eagerness that he noticed with a gleam of pleasure, “that you have treated my part in last night’s affair as kindly in this document that you are now preparing?”
“Look, my dear lady, for yourself!” cries he, happy in his own adroitness. “I will wager that you shall not find your name once mentioned in it.”
My gentleman handed five close-writ sheets of foolscap to me to examine for myself. I scanned every page, and saw that it was even as he said, and that the case, a black one in all conscience from the point of view of politics, and quite enough to hang even a peer of the realm upon, was made out entirely to the prejudice of his poor old lordship.