“Why, look ’ere, this chap’s been making up to six gals at the same time—or perhaps they’ve bin a-makin’ up to him—anyhow, whichever way ye put it, every gal in the place is running after him. Well, he can’t possibly marry them all, don’t ye see? The thing ’ud be to induce one of these here disapp’inted gals to threaten to take an action against him for Breach of Promise of Marriage. Nothing in the world frightens a man so much as the notion of an action for ‘Breach’.”
The other Sam slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. “Well done,” he cried. “Rabbit me, it do take a lawyer to think of they things.”
The rest, however, looked dubious. Each one thought of his own sweetheart, and mentally resolved that she should never be permitted to sacrifice herself for the public weal.
“’Ees,” said Tom hesitatingly, voicing the general sentiment after a pause. “It do sound right enough, but the question is—which maid is it to be?”
“Oh, that’s easily answered,” returned Cross, waving his pipe airily. “Which is the staidest an’ ugliest?”
There was a simultaneous outcry; the maidens of Branston and the neighbourhood were apparently each and all in the flower of youth and beauty. Sharp words were exchanged, however. Tom, while defending Rosie from the imputed cast in her eye, took occasion to animadvert on Mary’s carroty locks, and the last-named damsel’s admirer nearly came to blows with Jim on the subject of Chrissy’s age, he asserting that she was a staid girl, while her lover stoutly declared that she was not yet five-and-twenty.
Just as the hubbub was at its height, an elderly man, who had been smoking in silent amusement in the corner of the room, remarked that if they were on the look-out for an ill-favoured sort o’ body, a bit on in years, they couldn’t do better than see what could be made of Anne Clarke of the “Roebuck”.
“I seed Trooper Willcocks wi’ his arm round her waist t’other day,” he added. “Him an’ a couple more young sparks come in for a glass—and Willcocks had had a drop too much already. He’d got into the way o’ love-making, d’ye see, and she was the only maid handy, so he made up to her, bein’ too far gone to see the difference. If he didn’t begin palaverin’, an’ tellin’ her cock-an’-bull stories about his adventures out there at the war, and how he longed for faymale love an’ sympathy. His arm was round her waist, I tell ’ee, before his first pint was drunk!”
Samuel Cross jumped off the table, his little eyes dancing in his head. “The very thing,” he cried rapturously. “Boys, we’ll make a grand job of this. It will work up to a lovely case. But Mum’s the word, remember—the game will be spoilt if a hint of it gets out. Cheer up, lovers all, you’ll get your sweethearts back, I promise you. If Trooper Willcocks doesn’t show a clean pair of heels before long, I’m a Dutchman.”
The Roebuck Inn was a somewhat dreary-looking little hostelry, about a mile away from the town of Branston. It was situated in a kind of fold in the downs, a hollow between two vast undulating tracts of green. A handful of thatched cottages flanked it, and the river ran so near that the premises of the Roebuck were regularly flooded once or twice a year when “the springs rose”.