“Yes, I can swear that right enough. At the very worst, the little fighting-cock will only enter on a short and a merry life. Why, Hetty,” continued the man, “think of what it all means—lots of money, lots of excitement, hairbreadth escapes, adventures no end.”
“Prison afterwards, penal servitude, and worse perhaps,” she muttered under her breath.
“True enough,” replied the man. “I ain’t one to shut my eyes to the danger; we most of us go that way in the long run; we make up our minds to that from the first. Why, it is part of the excitement. The fear, for I suppose it is a sort of fear, makes the pleasure of the present all the greater. Oh, girl, it is a mad, merry life, and I would not change it for twenty of the humdrum existences of the city clerk and the other poor, half-starved beggars I see around me. Now then, my pretty one, when shall the marriage bells chime?”
“Not yet,” she answered; “I don’t want to be your wife yet awhile.”
“Yes, but I want you to. You know too much, Hester Winsome; you must join us out and out now, or take the consequences.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning pale.
For answer, Scrivener once again put his arm round her waist, drew her close to him, put his hand under her chin, and looked fixedly into her eyes. Then he whispered a short sentence into her ear.
Whatever he told her had a queer effect. She turned first a vivid red, and then white to her lips; her slender figure swayed as if she would faint, and were the man not supporting her, she must have fallen.
“There’s a brave lass,” he said; “you have taken it as I knew you would. You must make the best of things now, my beauty. I go back to town to-morrow, or perhaps to-night, and I’ll see what the registrar requires. It is my belief, as I have been so long in the place, that we can be married at very short notice. Now, you leave your present situation in a week or ten days at the farthest. Why, look here, I am no end of a swell in town. You’ll be surprised when I take you to your home. In my own way I am as good as Silver—yes, that I am. I believe his dame was a good bit taken aback when she came here; so you’ll be when I take you to my humble dwelling, pretty Hetty. Now let me hear from those beautiful rosebud lips that you’ll soon be mine.”