"That is ill news, indeed," I said.
"I have come to London on my own affairs, and been to seek you at your cousin Alstree's. When I learnt of the trouble that had befallen I followed you to this house, and right glad I am that you are safe with so good a woman as Mrs. Gaunt."
"But why should you be in London when the whole countryside at home is in gaol or in mourning? Have you no friend to help? Did you sneak away to be out of it all?" I asked with the silly petulance of a maid that knows nothing and will say anything.
"Yes," he said, hanging his head like one ashamed, "I sneaked away to be out of it all."
It vexed me to see him so, and I went on in a manner that it pleased me little afterwards to remember. "You, that talked so of the Protestant cause! you, that were ready to fight against Popery! you were not one of those that marched for Bristol or fought at Sedgemoor?"
"No," he said, "I did neither of these things."
"Yet you have run away from the sight of your neighbours' trouble—lest, I suppose, you should anyways be involved in it. Well, 'twas a man's part!"
He was about to answer me when we both started to hear a sound in the house. There was a foot on the stairs that I knew well. Tom turned aside and listened, for we had now withdrawn to the kitchen.
"That is a man's tread," he said; "I thought you lived alone with Mrs. Elizabeth Gaunt."
"Mrs. Gaunt spends her life in good works," I answered, "and shows kindness to others beside me."