“I didn’t strike him,” he answered sulkily. Clearly she had not recognized him—a position not without its advantages. Doubtless the raw youth of her childish memories was effectually buried beneath this manly form, set off by the elegant London suit, this well-barbered head, and the face that had exchanged freckles for the stamp of experience. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “I fed the brute at the inn.”
“Which brute?” retorted Jinny sharply. But at this moment Nip, who had been calmly lapping the dregs of the pool, intervened by leaping up to lick Will’s hand.
“I beg your pardon,” she murmured, coming to a standstill.
“Granted,” he said, not to be outdone in graciousness, and beginning to enjoy the advantage her ignorance of his identity gave him. “But that’s no proof I haven’t beaten him. You remember the saying:
_A woman, a dog, and a walnut-tree,_ _The more you beat them, the better they be._”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Jinny, bridling up again.
He changed the subject quickly. “Have you got a drumstick?”
He laughed. “It’s for the drum at the show. Miss Flippance thinks you didn’t deliver it.”
“Why, it was tied on the drum. The fool of a man must have dropped it—if he hasn’t poked it inside the drum. Did you look under the benches?”
“No. That’s it! I remember now seeing the man take the drum inside by mistake. He must have dropped it on the way back.”
“Don’t you think it would have been more sensible to look before you leaped—especially such a long leap! And what a pace you must have come in this heat!”
He flushed faintly. “I’m a good walker. I know the cuts.”
“Well, if you get back as quick as you came, there won’t be much time lost.” She clucked up Methusalem. “Good afternoon—hope you’ll find your stick, and that you’ll drum-in a good house.”
What! She too thought him capable of being a drum-banger, a minion of marionettes. Had women then no eye—no perception of clothes—as well as no humour? The mob was melting away under their amiable parley, but he now rallied it afresh: “Stop!” he called desperately after Jinny. “Stop!”
But Nip’s joyous bark at the resumption of the journey drowned all lesser remarks, and again the cart receded on the horizon—an horizon he knew houseless and arid, no region for a lonely, good-looking girl. Let poor pockmarked Polly Flippance brave the wild, if female carriers there must be: not his Jinny. No, he must reveal himself at the next stop, he must remonstrate, protest.
