“I should think so. I have been hoping for this day any time this four years, and now it has come, and gone off well, too, thanks to you, Harry.”
“Thanks to me? Very good; I am open to any amount of gratitude.”
“I think you have every reason to be satisfied with your second day's work at Englebourn, at any rate.”
“So I am. I only hope it may turn out as well as the first.”
“Oh, there's no doubt about that.”
“I don't know. I rather believe in the rule of contraries.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, when you inveigled me over from Oxford, and we carried off the sergeant from the authorities, and defeated the yeomanry in that tremendous thunder-storm, I thought we were a couple of idiots, and deserved a week each in the lockup for our pains. That business turned out well. This time we have started with flying colours and bells ringing, and so—”
“This business will turn out better. Why not?”
“Then let us manage a third day's work in these parts as soon as possible. I should like to get to the third degree of comparison, and perhaps the superlative will turn up trumps for me somehow. Are there many more young women in the place as pretty as Mrs. Winburn? This marrying complaint is very catching, I find.”