‘Yes-or outrageous!’

‘No,’ she decided. ‘It couldn’t have meant that, because I wasn’t outrageous when I went to London. I behaved with perfect propriety-and insipidity.’

‘You may have behaved with propriety, but insipidity I cannot allow!’

‘Well, you thought so at the time!’ she said tartly. ‘And, to own the truth, I was insipid. Mama was watching me, you see.’

He remembered how silent and stupid she had appeared at Austerby, and said: ‘Yes, you must certainly escape from her. But not on the common stage, and not unescorted! Is that agreed?’

‘Thank you,’ she replied meekly. ‘I own it will be more comfortable to travel post. When shall I be able to set forward, do you think?’

‘I can’t tell that. No London vehicles have gone by yet, which leads me to suppose that the drifts must be lying pretty thick beyond Speenhamland. Wait until we have seen the Bristol Mail go past!’

‘I have a lowering presentiment that we shall see Mama’s travelling carriage instead-and it will not go past,’ stated Phoebe, in a hollow tone.

‘I pledge you my word you shan’t be dragged back to Austerby-and that you may depend on!’

‘What a very rash promise to make!’ she observed.

‘Yes, isn’t it? I am fully conscious of it, I assure you, but having given my word I am now hopelessly committed, and can only pray to heaven I may not find myself involved in any serious crime. You think I’m funning, don’t you? I’m not, and will immediately prove my good faith by engaging Alice’s services.’

‘Why, what can she do?’ demanded Phoebe.

‘Go with you as your maid, of course. Come, come, ma’am! After such a strict upbringing as you have endured is it for me to tell you that a young female of your quality may not travel without her abigail?’

‘Oh, what fustian!’ she exclaimed. ‘As though I cared for that!’

‘Very likely you do not, but Lady Ingham will, I promise you. Moreover, if the road should be worse than we expect you might be obliged to spend a night at some posting house, you know.’

This was unanswerable, but she said mutinously: ‘Well, if Alice doesn’t choose to go I shan’t regard such nonsensical stuff!’

‘Oh, now you are glaringly abroad! Alice will do precisely what I tell her to do,’ he replied, smiling.

The easy confidence with which he uttered these words made her hope very much that he would meet with a rebuff from Alice, but nothing so salutary happened. Learning that she was to accompany Miss to the Metropolis, Alice fell into blissful ecstasy, gazing upon Sylvester with incredulous wonder, and breathing reverently: ‘Lunnon!’ When it was disclosed to her that she should be given five pounds to spend, and her ticket on the stage for her return journey, she became incapable of speech for several minutes, being afeared, as she presently informed her awed parent, to bust her stay-laces.

The thaw set in, and with it arrived the errant ostler, full of hair-raising accounts of the state of the road. Mrs. Scaling told him darkly that he would be sorry presently that he had not made a push to return immediately to the Blue Boar; and when he learned what noble guests she was entertaining he was indeed sorry. But when he discovered that the stables had fallen under the governance of an autocrat who showed no disposition to abdicate in his favour, but, on the contrary, every disposition to set him to work harder than he had ever done, he was not so sorry. He might have missed handsome largesse, but he had also missed several days of being addressed as ‘my lad,’ and having his failings crisply pointed out to him, and being commanded to perform all over again such tasks as Keighley considered him to have scamped. Nor were his affronted sensibilities soothed by the treatment he received at Swale’s hands. Swale was forced to eat his dinner in the kitchen among the vulgar, but no power known to man could force him to notice the existence of a common ostler. So aloof was his demeanour, so disdainful his glance, that the ostler at first mistook him for his master. He discovered later that the Duke was more approachable.

The first vehicles to pass the inn came from the west, a circumstance which made Phoebe very uneasy; but a day later the Bristol Mail went by, at so unusual an hour that Mrs. Scaling said they might depend upon it the road was still mortal bad to the eastward. ‘Likely as not they’ve been two days or more getting here,’ she said. ‘They do be saying in the tap that there’s been nothing like it since four years ago, when the river froze over in London-town, and they had bonfires on it, and a great fair, and I don’t know what-all. I shouldn’t wonder at it, miss, if you was to be here for another se’enight,’ she added hopefully.

‘Nonsense!’ said Sylvester, when this was reported to him. ‘What they say in the tap need not cast you into despair. Tomorrow I’ll drive to Speenhamland, and discover what the mail-coachmen are saying.’

‘If it doesn’t freeze again tonight,’ amended Phoebe, a worried frown between her brows. ‘It was shockingly slippery this morning, and you will have enough to do in holding those greys of yours without having that added to it! I could not reconcile it with my conscience to let you set forth in such circumstances!’

‘Never,’ declared Sylvester, much moved, ‘did I think to hear you express so much solicitude on my behalf, ma’am!’

‘Well, I can’t but see what a fix we should be in if anything should happen to you,’ she replied candidly.

The appreciative gleam in his eyes acknowledged a hit, but he said gravely: ‘The charm of your society, my Sparrow, lies in not knowing what you will say next-though one rapidly learns to expect the worst!’

It did not freeze again that night; and the first news that greeted Phoebe, when she peeped into Tom’s room on her way downstairs to breakfast, was that he had heard a number of vehicles pass the inn, several of which he was sure came from the east. This was presently confirmed by Mrs. Scaling, who said, however, that there was no telling whether they had come from London, or from no farther afield than Newbury. She was of the opinion that it would be unwise to venture on such a hazardous journey until the snow had entirely gone from the road; and was regaling Phoebe with a horrid story of three outside passengers on the stage-coach who had died of the cold in just such weather, when Sylvester arrived on the scene, and put an end to this daunting history by observing that since Miss Phoebe was not proposing to travel to London on the roof of a stage-coach there was no need for anyone to feel apprehensive on her account. Mrs. Scaling reluctantly conceded this point, but warned his grace that there was a dangerous gravel pit between Newbury and Reading, very hard to see when there had been heavy falls of snow.

‘Like the coffee pot,’ said Sylvester acidly. ‘I don’t see that at all-and I should wish to do so immediately, if you please!’

This had the effect of sending Mrs. Scaling scuttling off to the kitchen. ‘Do you suppose there really is any danger of driving into a gravel pit, sir?’ asked Phoebe.

‘No.’

‘I must say, it sounds very unlikely to me. But Mrs. Scaling seems to think-’

‘Mrs. Scaling merely thinks that the longer she can keep us here the better it will be for her,’ he interrupted.

‘Well, you need not snap my nose off!’ countered Phoebe. ‘Merely because you have come down hours before you are used to do!’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am!’ he said frigidly.

‘It’s of no consequence at all,’ she assured him, smiling kindly at him. ‘I daresay you are always disagreeable before breakfast. Many people are, I believe, and cannot help themselves, try as they will. I don’t mean to say that you do try, of course: why should you, when you are not obliged to be conciliating?’

It was perhaps fortunate that the entrance of Alice at this moment obliged Sylvester to swallow the retort that sprang to his lips. By the time she had withdrawn again he had realized (with far less incredulity than he would have felt a week earlier) that Miss Marlow was being deliberately provoking; and he merely said. ‘Though I may not be obliged to conciliate, you should reflect, ma’am, that it is otherwise with you! I rose at this unseasonable hour wholly on your behalf, but I might yet decide not to go to Newbury after all.’

‘Oh, are you capricious as well?’ asked Phoebe, raising eyes of innocent inquiry to his face.

‘As well as what?’ demanded Sylvester. He saw her lips part, and added hastily: ‘No, don’t tell me! I can hazard a tolerably accurate conjecture, I imagine!’

She laughed, and began to pour out the coffee. ‘I won’t say another word till you’ve come out of the sullens,’ she promised.

Though strongly tempted to reply in kind, Sylvester decided, upon reflection, to hold his peace. Silence prevailed until, looking up from his plate a few minutes later, he found that she was watching him, with so much the air of a bird hopeful of crumbs that he burst out laughing, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, you-Sparrow! What an abominable girl you are!’

‘Yes, I am afraid I am,’ she said, quite seriously. ‘And nothing seems to cure me of saying things I ought not!’

‘Perhaps you don’t try to overcome the fault?’ he suggested, quizzing her.

‘But, in general, I do try!’ she assured him. ‘It is only when I am with persons such as you and Tom- I mean-’

‘Ah, just so!’ he interrupted. ‘When you are with persons whose opinions are of no particular consequence to you, you allow rein to your tongue?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, pleased to find him of so ready an understanding. ‘That is the matter in a nutshell! Will you have some more bread-and-butter, sir?’