“’Tother way to the tap-room,” she added ungraciously.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Clarke. I come on a very different matter—a very delic_ate_ matter, and one which nearly concerns you.”
Anne fixed her most tractable eye upon him and considered; after a few minutes a light appeared to break in on her, and her face became almost pleasant.
“I d’ ’low ye be the lawyer feller, bain’t ye? Have ’ee come to say Father or me’s come in to a legacy?”
“Not exactly that, Miss Clarke, though I shouldn’t say there wasn’t money in it. You will find, Miss, that it will be to your advantage to place entire confidence in me.”
Anne hitched the basket a little higher up on her hip, assisting the operation by a jerk of her bony knee, and stared harder than ever; even the unmanageable eye assuming an expression of lively interest which was positively uncanny.
Samuel came closer, laid one hand on the cold, damp, red arm which encircled the basket, and whispered mysteriously.
“It concerns your affections, Miss Clarke. Your woman’s ’eart, what have been cruelly trifled with.”
“Get out!” returned Miss Clarke succinctly and fiercely. “Don’t ’ee think ye can come a-gammonin’ o’ me. I’m up to ye an’ your tricks. Be off this minute, or I’ll—”
“Now, now, my good lady, be patient,” cried Samuel, starting back, well out of reach of the basket, which the irate damsel had lifted suspiciously high. “I have come here in your interest, I assure you. I have come to make a suggestion which is entirely to your advantage, and which will not only avenge your outraged feelin’s, but put money in your pocket. But you must listen to me—you must allow me to explain; moreover you must trust in me.”
Anne hitched up her basket again and jerked her thumb in the direction of the house.
“Will ’ee come in?” she inquired; and without waiting for a reply led the way through the yard, over a kind of wooden dam which had been placed across the doorway, and finally into the damp and deserted tap-room, where an evil-smelling paraffin lamp was already burning. Having set down her burden and closed the door, she turned and faced the lawyer’s clerk.
“Miss Clarke,” began Samuel respectfully and mysteriously, “a rumour has reached me of the villainous way in which Trooper Willcocks has trifled with your feelin’s. Now wait a bit, now wait a bit—” uplifting one hand as Anne was about to make some wrathful rejoinder. “You’d be quite in the right to object to my intrudin’ on so delic_ate_ a matter if there weren’t a _business_ side to it, but ye see there is a business side and that’s what I’ve come about. There’s woman’s rights as well as woman’s feelin’s. Ah, if it wasn’t for that, Miss Clarke, maybe some of us gay young men would find your sex even more _un_resistible than we do already. But the notion of a Breach of Prom., Miss, is enough to steady the liveliest of us.” He leered at her out of his cunning little eyes, and continued emphatically: “Maybe you didn’t know, Miss Clarke, as when a good-for-nothing young chap same as Trooper Willcocks comes philandering arter a lady that lady can have the law on him if he goes too far. Now there’s a strange report in the town what says Trooper Willcocks’ arm were round your waist t’other night, Miss Clarke.”