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Where can I be else?" he asked, lightly now; but it was with a forced lightness of demeanour, or Sophie Tarne was very much deceived. "Helping your king, not warring against him and his laws," said Sophie, very quickly. "I owe no allegiance to King George.
The farm servants had gone to their homes, save the few that were attached to the premises, such as scullery-maids and dairymaids; and Mrs. Pemberthy, Mrs. Tarne, and her daughter Sophie were waiting early supper for Reuben, and wondering what kept him so long from his home and his sweetheart. Mrs.
"They had better come in, aunt, especially as we are quite helpless to keep them out. I could fire that gun," Sophie said, pointing to an unwieldy old blunderbuss slung by straps to the ceiling, " and I know it's loaded. But I'm afraid it wouldn't be of much use." "It might make them angry," said Mrs. Pemberthy. "It would only kill one at the best," remarked Mrs. Tarne, with a heavy sigh.
"My word of honour," he repeated; "our words of honour, and speaking for all my good friends present; is it not so, men?" "Ay, ay that 's right," chorused the good friends; and then Sophie Tarne, not without an extra plunging of the heart beneath her white crossover, unlocked the stout oaken door and let in her unwelcome visitors.
Why did you not come before to help us to tell us what to do?" And Sophie Tarne ran to him and put her arms round his neck and burst into tears. It was not a wise step on Sophie's part, but it was the reaction at the sight of her sweetheart, at the glimpse, as it were, of deliverance. "There, there, don't cry, Sophie; keep a stout heart!" he whispered.
This, being fortunately bawled forth all at once was incomprehensible to the dwellers within doors, now all scared together and no longer cool and self-possessed. "Robbers!" said Mrs. Tarne. "We've never been molested before, at least not for twenty years or more," said Mrs. Pemberthy; "and then I mind " "Is it likely to be any of Reuben's friends?" asked Sophie, timidly.
Tarne was out late and he was often very, very late, and the Lord knows where he'd been, either! I couldn't keep a limb of me still till he came home again. I was as bad as your aunt indoors there till I was sure he was safe and sound." "But he always came home safe and sound, mother." "Nearly always.
Mrs. Tarne was the most restless of the three women. Good Mrs. Pemberthy, though physically shaken, was not likely to be nervous concerning her son, and, indeed, was at any time only fidgety over her own special complaints a remarkable trait of character deserving of passing comment here.
And now Sophie Tarne and her mother were staying for a few days longer at Maythorpe Farm after the funeral. Mrs. Tarne, having been a real Pemberthy before her unfortunate marriage with the improvident draper of King's Norton, was quite one of the family, and seemed more at home at Finchley than was the new widow, Mrs.
"Oh no; Reuben has no bellowing crowd like that for friends. Ask who is there somebody." But nobody would go to the door save Sophie Tarne herself. The maids were huddled in a heap together in a corner of the dairy, and refused to budge an inch, and Mrs. Tarne was shaking more than Mrs. Pemberthy.
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