“Do you know you’re a troublesome, humoursome baggage, miss? What do you think your whimsies have cost the poor Captain?” He threw a great parcel of papers into my lap. “There, take ’em, and see what they come to. On my life, I’m ashamed to touch ’em.”
I unrolled the papers. They were Indian bonds of great sums, three hundred and five hundred pounds, and the like. I sought to reckon up their value, as my papa bade me, but could not come at it in my confusion.
“Pray, sir, what’s all this money?” I said, trying to speak calmly.
“Why, that’s your ransom, miss, to deliver you from the Captain’s clutches, though why he should have to pay it puzzles me.”
“Sure, sir, you must be jesting, and yet it en’t like my papa to rally me on so sorrowful a subject.”
“Sorrowful indeed, miss. I would pay down myself that sum you hold if it would free me from the reproach of having brought so much misfortune upon a man that I esteem the very chiefest of my friends, when I thought only to do him good.”
“But, dear sir, is it I that have done him harm?”
“Yes, miss, you, and that long Scotch lad of yours, and the tattlers and scandal-mongers of this place, and I myself, as I said.”
“You terrify me, sir. What’s happened to the Captain?”
“Oh, nothing, miss,” says my papa; “only that he has been robbed of his mistress and a matter of five thousand pounds besides.”