“Devil take the old cat,” he said; “she is too deuced polite and purry to make me fancy her. Do you think she loves us, Jill? Damme, I’ll wager she’d like to slap your face.”
“And yours too, Lot, eh?”
They laughed and whipped up their horses to a trot as they topped the hill.
“Cousin Richard’s a little gentleman,” quoth Mr. Hardacre, “though he is a bit of a fool.”
“No, no, Lot, he is too honest, that is all. I like the lad. He has a sweet nature.”
“What I should like to know is,” returned the brother, “what sort of mischief that old catamaran is plotting. She’s a regular Jezebel, Jill. Deuce take it, she would cheat Old Nick into believing her an angel, but she won’t cheat me.”
Meanwhile poor Bess, in Pevensel, had already been confronted with Isaac Grimshaw’s authority. She had told old Ursula of the pistols Jeffray had given her, and while the girl was away milking just before sunset, the old lady had crept up the stairs, filched away the pistols from the cupboard, and hidden them in the hole under the floor where she kept her guineas. The same evening, as Bess was sitting on the settle before the fire, thinking of Jeffray, her work lying idle in her lap, there came a sudden knocking at the cottage door. Old Ursula jumped up, shot back the bolt, and let in Isaac and his son. She locked the door after them and pocketed the key. Bess, starting up from the settle, became aware instinctively that there was some conspiracy afoot against herself.
Isaac, glib and smiling, thrust Dan forward—Dan, upon whose hairy face there was a suggestive and sheepish grin.
“I be come to claim you, Bess,” he said, shifting his fur cap from hand to hand.
“Claim me!”