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"Every word of it is true," the girl said, gently; "father, I have done every word of what they say, except about knocking down Captain Carroway. I have promised to marry Robin Lyth, by-and-by, when you agree to it." Stephen Anerley's ruddy cheeks grew pale, and his blue eyes glittered with amazement.
Stephen Anerley's daughter was by no means of a crooked mind, but open as the day in all things, unless any one mistrusted her, and showed it by cross-questioning.
There was a big black man lying where he had fallen, his huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every wound rosetted with its circle of flies. The Arab was stretched out within a few yards of him, with two hands clasped over the dreadful thing which had been his head. Across him was lying Anerley's fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at half cock.
Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again. "Cock it, you fool!" shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant, with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and came down with his bare feet upon Anerley's chest.
But luckily the clerk, with great presence of mind, awoke, and believing the sermon to be over, from the number of men who were standing up, pronounced "Amen" decisively. During the whole of the homeward drive Farmer Anerley's countenance was full of thought; but he knew that it was watched, and he did not choose to let people get in front of him with his own brains.
This was not Master Anerley's general style of welcoming a guest, but he hated new-fangled Frenchified manners, as he told his good wife, when he boasted by-and-by how finely he had put that old coxcomb down. "You never should have done it," was all the praise he got. "Mr. Mordacks is a business man, and business men always must relieve their minds."
Recovering from illness, has any man been known to say that the doctor recovered him? Mrs. Anerley's views upon the subject were much the same, though modified, of course, by the force of her own experience. She might have had a much richer man than Stephen; and when he was stingy, she reminded him of that, which, after a little disturbance, generally terminated in five guineas.
For she always sat next to him, as she had done before there came any children, and it seemed ever since to be the best place for her to manage their plates and their manners as well. Mistress Anerley's weakness was almost conspicuous to herself she worshipped her eldest son, perhaps the least worshipful of the family.
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