“You are not aware then, madam,” replied Miss Prue, “that we bought quite recently a little place in Fifeshire?”
“Indeed!” says my aunt, with interest, “and a very charming country to be sure.” Then she turned to me and said: “Barbara, I am come to speak to you of a particular affair. Captain Grantley has just had the goodness to inform me that he proposes shortly to have this house searched from cellar to attic, to discover if that prisoner is hid anywhere within it. I told him that it was a most monstrous project, and one more monstrous still to undertake, as by that means our house and all its contents would be quite exposed to the mercy of his men, who being of the very scum can no more be trusted with good furniture than can a cat with a jug of cream.”
“Very true, dear aunt,” says I, “and I trust you will oppose it.”
“I have opposed it,” says my aunt, grimly; “but the Earl, your papa, and this Captain man are really most unreasonable men.”
“Prisoner!” cried Miss Prue. “Search the house! La! we shall have some fun, I’m certain.”
“We shall, indeed!” says I, even more grimly than my aunt.
Here it was that the dowager, to my infinite relief, bowed stiffly to Miss Prudence, and renounced the room in a distinctly disdainful manner.
“Bab,” says the prisoner so soon as she was gone, “I consider that I have carried this off gallantly. But I fear, dear Bab, that if I stay here any longer than a day I shall prove a thorn in the flesh of that old lady. Her icy mien provokes me.”
“Prue,” says I, unable to repress the admiration that I felt for the agile fashion in which he had crept out of a corner uncomfortably tight, “you will either attain to the post of Prime Minister of England or a public death by hanging. There will be no half course in your career, I’m certain. For your wickedness is as great as is your wit. But you really must think a trifle more about your pious character, my dear Miss Canticle.”
Now that my aunt was apprised of Miss Prue’s presence in the house, it behoved us to wear bold faces and put our trust in impudence and the good luck that usually attends it. She must be presented to the Earl, and share our daily life entirely. She must be treated as an equal, and carry herself with sustained dignity and ease; she must be nothing less than perfect in the playing of her part, else questions would be provoked, any one of which might prove fatal to our scheme. Therefore, I occupied the interval between this and a quarter after four, at which hour I was due at the tea-table in the dowager’s drawing-room, in schooling Prue in carriage, etiquette, and family affairs. And I cannot repeat too often that if this lad was not by birth and training a person of the mode, his natural instinct for mummery was in itself so admirably fine that had he been asked to don the royal purple of a potentate, he would have filled the throne at a moment’s notice and have looked a king and acted like one. Besides, he had this very great advantage—he had been bred to no sphere in particular, and there seemed such a native richness in his character as made him ripe for any. The keenest observation of man and nature supplied in him a course of education in the schools. Therefore his mind had no predisposition towards any avocation. He was neither a physician nor a priest, a fop nor a vender of penny ballads. He was just (in my idea) an intrepid young adventurer, a charming vagabond, with enough of sense and courage in him to become anything he chose.