“Ay, underfoot,” she said. “But everything in its place. My man, he be mad upon tod-hunting; but I never knew him go to Manchester ’Change to seek one.”
“No?” Mr. Bishop held his pipe at arm’s length, and smiled at it mysteriously. “Yet I’ve seen one there,” he continued, “or in such another place.”
“Where?”
“Common Garden, London.”
“It was in a box, then.”
“It was, ma’am,” Mr. Bishop replied, with smiling emphasis. “It was in a box—‘safe bind, safe find,’ ma’am. That’s the motto of my line, and that was it precisely! More by token it’s not outside the bounds of possibility you may see”—he glanced towards the door as he knocked his pipe against his top-boot—“one of my tods in a box before morning.”
Mrs. Gilson shot out her underlip and looked at him darkly. She never stooped to express surprise; but she was surprised. There was no mistaking the ring of triumph in the runner’s tone; yet of all the unlikely things within the landlady’s range none seemed more unlikely than that he should flush his game there. She had asked herself more than once why he was there; and why no coach stopped, no chaise changed horses, no rider passed or bagman halted, without running the gauntlet of his eye. For in that country of lake and mountain were neither riots nor meetings; and though Lancashire lay near, the echoes of strife sounded but weakly and fitfully across Cartmel Sands. Mills might be burning in Cheadle and Preston, men might be drilling in Bolland and Whitewell, sedition might be preaching in Manchester, all England might be in a flame with dear bread and no work, Corbett’s Twopenny Register and Orator Hunt’s declamations—but neither the glare nor the noise had much effect on Windermere. Mr. Bishop’s presence there seemed superfluous therefore; seemed—— But before she could come to the end of her logic, her staid waiting-maid appeared, demanding four pennyworth of old Geneva for the gentleman in Mr. Rogers’s room; and when she was serving, Mrs. Gilson took refuge in incredulity.
“A man must talk if he can’t do,” she said—“if he’s to live.”
Mr. Bishop smiled, and patted his buckskin breeches with confidence.
“You’ll believe ma’am,” he said, “when you see him walk into the coach with the handcuffs on his wrists.”