The Foundling

Chapter XI

The Duke returned to Baldock in high fettle. For one who had never before fended for himself, he had managed the affair, he thought, pretty well. Matthew’s letters were safely tucked into his pocket; he had not paid Mr. Liversedge a farthing for them; and he had not had recourse to Manton’s pistol. Even Gideon could hardly have done better. In fact, Gideon would probably not have done as well, since Mr. Liversedge, confronted by his formidable size and extremely purposeful manner, would undoubtedly have conducted himself far more warily. Gilly was too modest not to realize that the success of his stratagem must be largely attributed to his lack of inches, and his quite unalarming appearance. Mr. Liversedge had palpably summed him up as a scared boy within one minute of his having entered his parlour, and had not thought it necessary to be upon his guard. That had not been very wise of Mr. Liversedge, but Gilly was inclined to suspect that for all the breadth and scope of his visions, Mr. Liversedge was not a rogue of any great mental attainment. However, be that as it might, Gilly had scarcely expected to have succeeded so well, and he thought he had a very good right to feel in charity with himself. Nothing now remained to do but to burn Matthew’s letters, set Matthew’s anxious mind at rest, and go back to London with Tom next day. In his present mood he was rather sorry to have no excuse for absenting himself any longer from his household. Certain aspects of his stolen journey had not been altogether comfortable, but on the whole he had enjoyed himself very well, and he had derived a good deal of satisfaction from the discovery that he was not as helpless as he had feared he might be.

This mood of gentle elation suffered a set-back upon his arrival at the White Horse. The inn appeared to have become the focus of interest in the town, for a large and motley crowd was gathered before it, in the centre of which the impressive figure of the town-beadle seemed to be haranguing a heated and flustered Mrs. Appleby. Then the Duke perceived that one of the beadle’s ham-like hands was grasping young Mr. Mamble by the coat-collar, and a sense of foreboding crept over him. He drew up, and prepared to step down from the gig.

Nearly everyone was too much absorbed in the strife raging between the beadle, Mrs. Appleby, a weedy man in a black suit, a farmer with a red face, and a stout lady in a mob-cap, whose voice was even shriller than Mrs. Appleby’s, to have any attention to spare for the arrival of a gig; but the melancholy waiter, who had been surveying the scene with the gloomy satisfaction of one who has foreseen trouble from the outset, chanced to look up as the Duke rose from the driving-seat, and exclaimed: “Ah, here is the gentleman!”

The effect of these simple words was slightly overwhelming. Tom, taking advantage of an involuntary slackening of the grip on his collar, twisted himself free, and thrust his way through the crowd, crying thankfully: “Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Rufford!

He had scarcely reached the Duke’s side, and clutched his arm, when Mrs. Appleby had seized the other arm, saying indignantly: “Thank goodness you’ve come, sir! Such goings-on as I never saw, and me not knowing which way to turn!”

“Hif you are the cove as is responsible for this young varmint,” said the beadle, reaching the Duke a bare fifteen seconds later than Mrs. Appleby, “hit is my dooty to inform you—”

The rest of this pronouncement was lost in the instant hubbub that arose. The weedy man, the fanner, and the lady in the mob-cap all broke into impassioned speech. The Duke, stunned by Mrs. Appleby’s voice in one ear, and Tom’s in the other, begged them to speak to him one at a time, but was not attended to. Various members of the crowd thought it incumbent upon them to take sides in the dispute, and for a few minutes the fragments of their observations reached the Duke in a confused medley. Such phrases as he caught could not be regarded as other than ominous. The words “lock-up house”—“upsetting of the Mail”—and “a-smashing of Mr. Badby’s good cart” were being freely bandied about; and whereas one half of the crowd seemed disposed to take a lenient view of whatever it was that Tom had done, the other and more vociferous half was urgent with the beadle for his immediate transportation.

“I didn’t! I did not!” Tom asserted passionately. “Oh, sir, pray tell them I did not!”

“Sir!” began the beadle portentously,

“Mr. Rufford, sir, do you make him attend, for listen to me he will not!” besought Mrs. Appleby.

A sudden lull fell, and the Duke realized with dismay that everyone, with the exception of the beadle, was looking at him in the evident expectation that he would instantly take command of the situation. He had never regretted the absence of his entourage more. He even wished that his Uncle Lionel could have been suddenly and miraculously wafted to the scene. The very sight of Lord Lionel’s imposing figure and aristocratic visage would be enough to cause the crowd to disperse, while any well-trained footman would have cleaved a way for his Grace in a fashion haughty enough to have quelled even the beadle. But the Duke found himself bereft of all whose business in life it was to shield him from contact with the vulgar herd, and was obliged to fend once more for himself. He contrived to shake off the two frenzied grips on his arms, and to say in his usual gentle way: “Pray let us go into the house! And do not, I beg of you, all talk to me at once, for I can distinguish nothing that you say!”

His soft voice, falling upon the ears of the crowd in striking contrast to the strident accents of the combatants, seemed to have an instant and sobering effect. Even the beadle was not unaffected by the indefinable air of dignity which wrapped the Duke round, and raised no objection to withdrawing into the coffee-room of the inn.

“Come, Tom!” the Duke said. He saw one of the ostlers standing nearby, and added: “You there! Take the gig into the yard, if you please!”

He then passed into the White Horse, and Tom, Mrs. Appleby, the beadle, the weedy man, the farmer, and the lady in the mob-cap all crowded in after him. Once within the coffee-room both Tom and Mrs. Appleby would have poured their stories into his ears, but he interrupted them, saying: “Pray wait! I will attend to you in a minute.” He looked at the beadle, and said calmly: “Now will, you tell me what all this bustle is about?”

The beadle was impressed in spite of himself. Unquestionably this quiet young gentleman was a member of the Quality. His experience had taught him the value of civility in dealing with such, and it was in moderated accents that he informed the Duke that four varmints, of whom young Mr. Mamble was the ringleader, had not only caused obstruction upon the King’s highway, but had effected the ruin of an honest citizen’s new cart, and had been guilty of the frightful crime of delaying and seriously incommoding the Mail, the penalty for which offence, as Mr. Rufford was no doubt aware, being no less than the sum of five pounds.

“Dear me!” said the Duke. “And how did all this come about, Tom?”

“I didn’t do those things! At least, I never meant to, and how was I to know the Mail was approaching?” said Tom, deeply aggrieved. “You told me I might amuse myself!”

By this time another person had edged himself into the room, a nervous-looking man in a muffler, who awaited no invitation to describe to the Duke in detail the damage suffered by his new cart through the young cob’s rearing up in alarm, and subsequently kicking in the front of the vehicle, at the unprecedented sight of two donkeys, a cow, and Mr. Datchet’s old bay gelding being ridden backwards down the main street.

“It was a race!” explained Tom.

The beadle here took up the tale, and from his recital the Duke gathered that just as the entrants for this peculiar race reached the corner of the road, the Mail swept round it, coming from the opposite direction, and narrowly escaped an overturn. One of the leaders, in fact, got a leg over the trace, the coachman had the greatest difficulty in controlling his team, and all the passengers had suffered severe shocks to their nerves.

After recounting the exact circumstances of the crime, the beadle attempted to outline to the assembled company the ultimate fate of the sporting young gentlemen, and the immediate and awful penalties they had incurred. He was at once interrupted by the lady in the mob-cap, who asserted tearfully that her Will had always been a good boy, as well Mr. Piddinghoe knew, until led astray by evil companions. She was seconded by the weedy man, who stated that nothing short of the most violent pressure could have induced his Fred so to demean himself; and by the farmer, who said loudly and belligerently that it was nobbut a boy’s prank, and he would dust Nat’s jacket for him, and no more said.

However, a great deal more had to be said before the Duke could settle the affair. Mrs. Appleby very unwisely demanded to be told what should get into the boys to make them take and run a race backwards, and this encouraged Toni to explain indignantly and at length the difficulties of handicapping fairly two donkeys, one cow, and an old horse. He seemed to think that he deserved congratulation for having hit upon so novel a solution to the problem, and dwelled so insistently on the excellent performance of the cow under these conditions that everyone but the Duke and the beadle allowed themselves to be diverted from the main point at issue, and either exclaimed several times that they would never have thought it, or argued that it stood to reason the cow would have as good a chance as the horse, particularly seeing as the horse was that broken-down old brute of Mr. Datchet’s.

The Duke, meanwhile, detached the owner of the ruined cart from the circle, and settled his claims out of hand. Much mollified, Mr. Badby stowed away the money which the Duke paid him for the repair of his cart, and said that he had been young himself, and was never one to create a to-do over a trifle. It then transpired that the driver and the guard of the mail-coach had very handsomely forborne to lodge an official charge against Tom, so that with Mr. Badby’s retirement from the lists, the beadle was left without any very powerful weapon to use against the miscreants. The Duke was then inspired to suggest that after so much alarm and excitement everyone must stand in need of such revivifying cordials as could be found in the tap-room, and invited the assembled company to refresh themselves there at his expense. The idea took well; and after the Duke had sternly dismissed Tom to the Pink Parlour, and had promised the beadle that he should be suitably dealt with, the whole party repaired to the tap-room, where liberal potations of ale, gin, or porter very soon induced even the beadle and the weedy man, who proved to be Baldock’s leading tailor, to look upon the late disturbance as a very good jest. The Duke’s shy smile and quite unconscious charm were not without their effect, and since he was found to have not the least height in his manner it was not long before his obvious quality was forgotten, and he was being confided in on all manner of topics, from the Spasms endured by the lady in the mob-cap, to the shocking price of serges, corduroys, shalloons, and tammies.

By the time the Duke judged that he could bid farewell to his guests without causing them to think that he fancied himself above his company, Mrs. Appleby had three times whispered to him that his dinner was spoiling in the oven. He took his leave at last, and went upstairs to the parlour, where he found Tom awaiting him in a mood of almost equally matched penitence and vainglory. Tom was ready to justify himself at length, but as his protector, instead of rating him, succumbed to a fit of pent-up laughter as soon as he had fairly shut the door, his aggressive manner left him abruptly, and he offered up a handsome apology for having been the cause of so much trouble and expense.

“Indeed, I perceive clearly that you will soon ruin me!” the Duke said, still laughing. “I don’t know what you deserve should be done to you!”

“Sir, you won’t send me back to Pa and Mr. Snape, will you?” Tom demanded anxiously.

“No, no, nothing short of transportation will do for you!” the Duke told him.

His mind relieved of its only dread, Tom grinned gratefully, and applied himself with his usual energy and appetite to his dinner.

When he had retired to bed, which, since he was, he said, unaccountably tired, he was induced to do at an early hour, the Duke committed his cousin’s letters to the flames, and sent the waiter to obtain for him paper, ink, pens, and wafers. These commodities having been brought, the fire made up, and the blinds drawn, he sat down to write two letters. The first of these was to Matthew, at Oxford, and did not occupy him long. He sealed it with one of the wafers, wrote the direction, and was just about to scrawl his name across one corner when he recollected himself, and reopened the letter to add a postscript. “I fear you will have to pay some sixpences for this history” he wrote, smiling to himself,—“but it would never do, you know, for me to frank this. I hope you will not grudge it!” He then affixed a fresh wafer to his missive, laid it aside and wrote upon a new sheet of paper:

White Horse,

Baldock.

My dear Gideon,

Here the letter came to a sudden halt, it having just occurred to the Duke that he would in all probability see his dear Gideon before a letter could reach him. However, after biting the end of his quill reflectively for a few minutes, he decided that since had had nothing to read, and did not wish to retire to bed, he would write to Gideon after all. The urge to confide some part at least of his amazing new experiences to Gideon was irresistible. Besides, a description of Tom’s race and its consequences would occupy several sheets, so that Gideon would be forced to disgorge large sums to the Post Office for the privilege of receiving a letter from his noble relative, and that would be a very proper revenge on him for having tried to horrify one smaller and younger than himself with a blood-curdling novel. The Duke gave a little chuckle, dipped his quill in the ink, and lost no time in explaining this to Gideon. After that he embarked on a humorous account of his stage-coach journey, and in the most high-flown terms he could summon to mind, assured his cousin that he had already slain a considerable dragon, in the shape of an out-and-out villain, whom he had tricked, outwitted, and left for dead in a haunt of thieves and desperate characters from which he himself was lucky to have escaped with his life. He could fancy how Gideon would grin when he read this, and grinned himself. “And if you should wonder, my dear Gideon,” he continued, “why I should put myself to the trouble of writing to inform you of this when I have the intention of returning to London tomorrow, I must further inform you that I have engaged myself as bearleader to a youth of tender years, whose fertile mind suggests to him such ways of amusing himself as seem likely to keep me too fully occupied during the coming week to have leisure to spare for a visit to your chambers.”

He then favoured his cousin with the whole story of the backward-race, told him that his circle of friends had been enlarged to include a tailor, a lady who kept a pastry-cook’s shop, a beadle, and three farmers, and was just about to end his letter when he remembered something else which Gideon must certainly be told about. “By the by,” he wrote, “if you never hear of me again, you will know that I have fled the country, taking with me the most beautiful creature I ever beheld in my life. Alas that the notice of my engagement must by now have appeared in the Gazette! I would I could describe my inamorata to you, but no words could do even faint justice to her loveliness. The heart left my bosom in one bound! Ever your most affectionate

Adolphus.

He closed his letter, and directed it, reflecting that it would undoubtedly bring Gideon round to Sale House at the first opportunity. It was still quite early in the evening, and the rumble of voices in the tap-room came faintly to the Duke’s ears. He was just wondering whether or not to seek entertainment there when a knock fell on the door, and the waiter came in, and, bending a look upon him compound of curiosity and disapproval, informed him that there was a young person belowstairs who was desirous of seeing him. “Leastways,” he added, “I dunno who else it could be, for there ain’t no one else here like what she says you are, not in this house there ain’t.”

“A young person to see me?” echoed the Duke blankly. “You must be mistaken!” A sudden and unwelcome suspicion darted into his mind. He said: “Good God!” and changed colour.

The waiter observed his consternation with a certain satisfaction. “Ah!” he said. “And go away, which I told her to, she will not!”

“I’ll come!” the Duke said hastily, and went to the head of the stairs, and looked down into the lobby. Seated on a chair, a bandbox on her knees, and another at her feet, was Belinda, her enchanting face framed in a blue bonnet, and a pelisse buttoned up to her white throat. In front of her, and in an attitude of unmistakable hostility, stood Mrs. Appleby.

Some instinct warned the Duke that he beheld Trouble. A prudent man would at this point retire to his room, denying all knowledge of the fair visitor, and leave Mrs. Appleby to get rid of her, which, he judged, she would very soon do, if left undeterred. But the Duke had either too little prudence or too much chivalry to adopt this course; he went down the stairs.

Both ladies looked up quickly, one greeting him with a blinding smile, and the other with a stare of outraged virtue. “Oh, sir, please I had to come!” said Belinda.

“This young woman, sir,” said Mrs. Appleby grimly, “appears to have business with you, for all she cannot give you a name! And I will take leave to tell you, sir, that mine has always been a respectable house, and such goings-on I will not have!”

“Oh, hush, Mrs. Appleby!” begged the Duke. “I am acquainted with this lady!”

“Of that I make no doubt, sir!” retorted Mrs. Appleby.

The Duke sought wildly in his mind for an explanation likely to satisfy the landlady, and could hit upon only one. “She is Tom’s sister!” he said, devoutly hoping that Belinda would not deny it. “She has come in search of him, of course!”

Belinda, who seemed to have a mind very responsive to suggestion, nodded her head at this, and smiled at Mrs. Appleby.

“Indeed!” pronounced that lady. “Then perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me what your business is, miss?”

“To find Tom,” replied Belinda happily.

“I never heard such a tale, not in all my lifeI didn’t!” exclaimed Mrs. Appleby, outraged. “Why, you’re no more like him than I am! Sir, I’ll have you know—”

“And I have brought all my things with me, because I dare not go back, so if you please, sir, will you take care of me?” added Belinda, turning her melting gaze upon the Duke.

“Not in my house he will not!” declared Mrs. Appleby, without hesitation.

By this time a small audience, consisting of the waiter, the boots, the tapster, and two chambermaids had gathered in the lobby, and the Duke, acutely unhappy at finding himself the centre of so much curiosity, said: “Please step up to the parlour, Miss—Miss Mamble! And do you come up too, Mrs. Appleby! I will explain it to you in private!”

Belinda got up readily from the chair. The Duke took the bandboxes from her; and Mrs. Appleby, after demanding to know if her various servants could find nothing better to do than to stand there gaping, said that no amount of explanation would reconcile her to Belinda’s presence in the inn. But as Belinda and the Duke were by this time halfway up the stairs she was obliged to follow them, maintaining a threatening monologue all the way.

The Duke ushered Belinda into his parlour, set down the bandboxes, and firmly shut the door upon her. He turned to confront Mrs. Appleby.

That redoubtable lady at once broke into speech. If, she declared, Mr. Rufford had the least hope of her keeping that Hussy under her roof for as much as one hour he was sadly mistaken! To be sure, she might have guessed, after the events of this day, that something of the sort would happen, but boys’ mischief was one thing, and goings-on of this nature quite another.

“Mrs. Appleby,” interrupted the Duke, “can you seriously suppose that I nourish the slightest improper design towards that child? Why, she is hardly out of the school-room!”

“I know nothing of your designs, sir,” retorted Mrs. Appleby, “but hers are plain enough, and give her a room in my house I will not!”

“Then I must give her mine, and sleep on the sofa in the parlour,” said the Duke calmly.

Mrs. Appleby fought for breath.

“You cannot,” proceeded the Duke, “turn a child of that age into the street at this hour. Indeed, I am persuaded you are by far too good a woman to think of doing so.”

“Let her,” said Mrs. Appleby terribly, “go back to wherever it was she came from!”

“It is quite impossible that she should do so. I see I shall have to entrust the whole story to your ears,” said the Duke.

He then proceeded, somewhat to his own astonishment and considerably more to Mrs. Appleby’s, to weave about the unconscious persons of Belinda and Mr. Thomas Mamble a lurid and fantastic story in which defaulting trustees, cruel stepfathers, and hideous persecution figured prominently, if somewhat obscurely. He cast himself for the role of secret envoy, but being quite unable to think of any reason for an envoy’s presence in Baldock, took refuge in an air of mystery which so much bewildered Mrs. Appleby that she ended by weakly saying that Belinda might have a small bed-chamber at the back of the house for one night only, and that not because she believed one word of Mr. Rufford’s story, but because she was not, she hoped, an unmerciful woman.

The Duke, feeling worn-out by the exercise of so much imagination, mopped his damp brow as soon as Mrs. Appleby had sailed away to prepare the small back bed-chamber, and nerved himself to enter his parlour He found that Belinda, having shed her bonnet and pelisse, had made herself comfortable in an easy chair by the fire, and was eating one of the few apples Tom had left in the basket on the side-table. She greeted her host with her angelic smile, and said: “How disagreeable she is! Will she let me stay here, sir?”

“Yes, for tonight she will,” he replied. “But I do not understand! Why have you come? What is it you wish me to do for you?”

She looked at him in surprise and faint reproach. “But you said you wished you might take me with you!” she reminded him.

The Duke, who clearly saw an abyss yawning at his feet, said with a great deal of uneasiness in his voice: “Did I? Yes, well, but—but I cannot take you with me!”

“Can’t you?” said Belinda wistfully. “Then what must I do, please, sir?”

“My dear girl, how can I possibly advise you?” protested Gilly. “I do not even know why you have left your uncle!”

“Oh, he is not my uncle!” said Belinda blithely.

“Not your uncle? He is your guardian though, is he not?”

“He said he would be,” agreed Belinda, “but he never gave me any of the things he promised me, and besides, I don’t like it at that horrid little inn, so perhaps I won’t have him for a guardian any more. I thought I might have you for one instead,” she added confidingly.

“No,” said the Duke firmly, “that is quite impossible!”

Belinda sighed, but appeared to resign herself to her disappointment. She took another bite out of her apple, and fixed her eyes expectantly on the Duke’s face.

“Does Liversedge know you have come to me?” he demanded. She shook her head. “But how could you contrive to escape unseen? and how did you reach Baldock? You cannot have walked all the way, surely?”

“Oh, no! I only walked to the pike-road, and a kind gentleman took me up in his carriage,” Belinda explained. “And he said he would be very glad to take me to his house, only that perhaps his wife would not like it. I daresay she is a disagreeable lady, like that one downstairs. Ladies are nearly always so, are they not? I like gentlemen better.”

The Duke did not find this difficult to believe. He refrained from comment, however, merely repeating: “How did you contrive to escape from that place?”

“Well, Uncle Swithin’s head hurt him, so he went to lie down upon his bed, and everyone else was gone into the tap-room. Besides, Mr. Mimms would not care if he saw me go, because he doesn’t hold with females.”

“I see. But what made you run away? Did Liversedge blame you for what happened at the inn this afternoon? Was he perhaps angry with you?”

“Oh, yes! He said he wished he had not saddled himself with me, for I am too stupid to be of the least use to him, and he says he will send me back to Mrs. Pilling!” replied Belinda, large tears gathering in her eyes.

“Pray do not cry!” begged the Duke. “Who is Mrs. Pilling?”

“She is a very cross lady, not at all kind to me, and she will very likely put me in prison,” said Belinda, the tears welling over.

The Duke, who had had previous experience of the ease with which Belinda wept, watched in a fascinated way the large drops rolling down her cheeks without in the smallest degree impairing her beauty, and could not find it in his heart to blame Matthew by having succumbed to so much pathetic loveliness. After a moment, he said: “I wish you will not cry! No one will put you in prison, I assure you!”

Belinda obediently stopped crying, but said in a doleful voice: “Yes, she will, sir, for I have broken my indentures.”

Light began to break in upon the Duke. “Were you apprenticed to Mrs. Pilling?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, and I was learning to trim the hats very well, but then Mr. Liversedge said that if I went away with him I should live like a lady, and have a purple dress, and a ring to put on my finger. So I went with him, but Mrs. Dovercourt was cross, and I did not like it in Oxford above half, and now I think I would like not to live with Mr. Liversedge any more. But I daren’t go back to Bath, because besides putting me in prison Mrs. Pilling would very likely beat me as well.”

“Does she do so?” demanded the Duke, quite shocked at the thought that anyone could so maltreat the lovely Belinda.

“Yes, because I am very stupid,” explained Belinda, without rancour. “And Mr. Liversedge boxed my ears, too, though I said just what he told me I must. I am very unhappy!”

“No, no, don’t be unhappy!” said the Duke, terrified lest she should dissolve once more into tears. “No one shall beat you, or box your ears, I promise! You must tell me where your home is, and I will—”

“I haven’t got a home,” said Belinda.

“Oh!” said the Duke, somewhat dashed. “But you have relatives, have you not, Miss—What is your name?”

“Belinda,” she answered, with a look of surprise.

“Yes, I know, but your other name? Your surname?”

“Oh, I haven’t any other name!” she told him. “I’ma foundling.”

“A foundling!” he ejaculated. “Then you do not even know who your mother and father were?”

“Oh, no!” she said. “If you please, sir, may I have another apple?”

He handed her the basket. “Of course. But, my poor child, have you no relatives to whom you can him for help?”

“Oh, no!” she said again, shaking her head so that her golden curls were set quivering and bobbing. “Foundlings don’t, you know.”

“I didn’t know. That is, I had never thought—It is very dreadful!”

She agreed to this, but more with the air of one willing to please than with any particular chagrin.

“What in heaven’s name am I to do with you?” said the Duke, looking harassed.

Belinda said hopefully: “You did say that you wished you might give me the purple silk dress,” she suggested.

He could not help laughing. “No, no, that is not what I meant!”

She sighed, and the corners of her mouth drooped tragically. “No one ever gives me a purple silk dress,” she mourned, a sob in her voice.

The Duke had never had occasion to bestow much thought on female attire, but now that he came to consider the matter dispassionately he was bound to own that there was much to be said in extenuation of all those who had refused to let Belinda have her heart’s desire. The combination of those bright gold curls and a dress of purple silk would be shocking enough, he imagined, to stun all beholders. He made haste to divert her thoughts. “Belinda, have you no friend to whom you might go?”

She appeared to bend her mind seriously to this question; and after staring with wrinkled brow at the Duke for a moment or two, suddenly dazzled him with one of her brilliant smiles, and said: “Oh, yes, I have a friend that was used to work at a mantua-maker’s, only she was married, and went away from Bath. I should like of all things to visit her, for I daresay she has a baby now, and I am excessively fond of babies!”

“Where does she live?” asked the Duke.

Belinda sighed. “She went to a place called Hitchin, but I don’t know where it is, and I only recall it because it sounds like kitchen, and I think that is very droll, don’t you, sir?”

“Hitchin!” he exclaimed, his harassed air lightening a little. “But Hitchin lies only a few miles from here! I daresay no more than six or seven, perhaps not as much! If you think you would like to visit this friend, I will take you there tomorrow! Do you know her direction?”

“Oh, no!” said Belinda unconcernedly.

Again the Duke was dashed “Well, do you know her name?” he asked.

Belinda laughed merrily at this. “Why, of course I know her name! It is Maggie Street!”

“Then depend upon it we shall soon find her!” he said, much relieved.

At this moment, Mrs. Appleby entered the parlour, and announced that as Miss’s bedchamber was now ready for her she would escort Miss to it.

“Yes, please do so!” said the Duke. “And perhaps you would be so good as to bring up a glass of milk to her, for I fear she is rather hungry.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Mrs. Appleby stiffly. “Come with me, miss, if you please!”

She picked up the bandboxes, and swept them and Belinda inexorably out of the room, leaving the Duke feeling extremely exhausted, but not a little thankful that he was not to be saddled with Belinda for the rest of his life, as at one moment he had feared that he might be.