Samuel came closer, laid one hand on the cold, damp, red arm which encircled the basket, and whispered mysteriously.
“It concerns your affections, Miss Clarke. Your woman’s ’eart, what have been cruelly trifled with.”
“Get out!” returned Miss Clarke succinctly and fiercely. “Don’t ’ee think ye can come a-gammonin’ o’ me. I’m up to ye an’ your tricks. Be off this minute, or I’ll—”
“Now, now, my good lady, be patient,” cried Samuel, starting back, well out of reach of the basket, which the irate damsel had lifted suspiciously high. “I have come here in your interest, I assure you. I have come to make a suggestion which is entirely to your advantage, and which will not only avenge your outraged feelin’s, but put money in your pocket. But you must listen to me—you must allow me to explain; moreover you must trust in me.”
Anne hitched up her basket again and jerked her thumb in the direction of the house.
“Will ’ee come in?” she inquired; and without waiting for a reply led the way through the yard, over a kind of wooden dam which had been placed across the doorway, and finally into the damp and deserted tap-room, where an evil-smelling paraffin lamp was already burning. Having set down her burden and closed the door, she turned and faced the lawyer’s clerk.
“Now then, what is it?”
“Miss Clarke,” began Samuel respectfully and mysteriously, “a rumour has reached me of the villainous way in which Trooper Willcocks has trifled with your feelin’s. Now wait a bit, now wait a bit—” uplifting one hand as Anne was about to make some wrathful rejoinder. “You’d be quite in the right to object to my intrudin’ on so delicate a matter if there weren’t a business side to it, but ye see there is a business side and that’s what I’ve come about. There’s woman’s rights as well as woman’s feelin’s. Ah, if it wasn’t for that, Miss Clarke, maybe some of us gay young men would find your sex even more unresistible than we do already. But the notion of a Breach of Prom., Miss, is enough to steady the liveliest of us.” He leered at her out of his cunning little eyes, and continued emphatically: “Maybe you didn’t know, Miss Clarke, as when a good-for-nothing young chap same as Trooper Willcocks comes philandering arter a lady that lady can have the law on him if he goes too far. Now there’s a strange report in the town what says Trooper Willcocks’ arm were round your waist t’other night, Miss Clarke.”
Anne squinted down sideways at the singularly unattractive portion of her person just alluded to, as though wondering how Trooper Willcocks’ arm had ever got there; and indeed such a proceeding indicated an almost sublime degree of courage on the part of the gallant yeoman.
“’Twas a very tender act,” pursued Cross, “but a tender act don’t count for nothin’ by itself without the words are compromisin’. Now, can you call to mind anythin’ as Trooper Willcocks said, Miss Clarke?”