"I do--I've spoken to her for three minutes, and I can guess what she's like. I know something about women, and I feel sure that if you stand up to her now you'll be boss in your house for good. If not, she will. It's now or never."
"You--you're not joking, Mr. Wild?" said Robert piteously.
"I'm really serious. Now, come along with me and talk to these people. We'll let your wife catch us here. An audience ought to give you courage. Mind!" he added, holding Robert by the arm as they began to walk toward the aeroplane, "there must be no weakening, however terrible she may appear. Be a man, and you'll triumph!"
It was all very well to urge him to be a man, but Mr. Hedderwick had been through a very tense six hours. When he escaped from the vicarage he rushed straight for The Happy Heart. There he instructed Mr. Glew in a sentence of some five hundred words, without so much as a comma intervening, that he meant to retire to his room at once, that he was to be denied to all callers, that casual inquirers were to be told that he had gone to the station, that on no account must any one be allowed to come up-stairs, and that information was to be given when the coast was clear. "I'll explainitalllaterglewwhenihavetimebutrememberthatit's afiverinyourpocketifIcomethroughto-daysafe," he babbled, dashing furiously up-stairs. "Right, sir," responded Glew, a creature to whom the word "fiver" was all that was necessary by way of present explanation. Robert's bedroom door slammed and was locked behind him long before the "Right, sir" had died away.
The visit of Mrs. Hedderwick and the vicar's wife made matters fairly clear to the landlord; but, true to his salt and interest, he persisted in the tale that Robert had gone to the station. His story was disbelieved. This was not to be wondered at, considering the paucity of his inventive powers and imagination; for Glew did not adduce a particle of corroborative detail to support his statement. The ladies simply declined to give him credence, and demanded to be shown Mr. "Bangs'" bedroom. Foiled in this amiable purpose, the determined pair announced their intentions of waiting in the parlor till the victim appeared. The landlord's renewed protests and offers of affidavits had no weight with them, and they sat down with an awful dignity.