Anne?'
'Certainly not,' said I. 'Play upon your flageolet.'
The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.
Conscience doth make cowards of us all! I was so downcast by my
pitiful mismanagement of the morning's business that I shrank from
the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into
his idle tootling.
I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a
needle and thread. There is nothing more conducive to thought,
above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually
gained a clearness upon my affairs. I must be done with the
claret-coloured chaise at once. It should be sold at the next
stage for what it would bring. Rowley and I must take back to the
road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get
places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names! So much
trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time,
and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!
CHAPTER XXIV--THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE
I had hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was
dear to my heart. Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured
chaise, a couple of correctly dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young
fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our
own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with
the niceties and civilities of drill.
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