Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/268

 and get robbed of your coach and cattle? I should really have thought that had been quite enough to keep you out of mischief for a day or two. But no! Here you are in trouble again. No doubt you have quite forgotten the little lecture I read to you upon that occasion?"

"No, my dear, I cannot forget it, I assure you. It is still very vivid to me, I promise you." For indeed the little old man was still very conscious of a strange feeling of slippers whenever he chanced to sit down.

"Oh, yes, you have forgotten it," went on the irrepressible lady. "You must have done so. Now tell me what on earth have you been doing to make this handsome girl behave in such a ridiculous fashion?"

With one hand still rubbing his boxed ear and with the other holding out to his wife the terrible letter, the lawyer explained as coherently as possible the whole situation. He told the facts in a timid voice, for he was greatly troubled as to how his wife would take it, but her manner was the most shocking surprise to him, it was so entirely different from anything he might have expected, for when she heard about the press gang, she clapped her little mittens together, and, laughing aloud, urged her husband to go on with the tale which she found the most refreshing she had heard for a month of Sundays, and at the conclusion she gave way to the most extraordinary capers of excitement, literally tripping round and round the table, exclaiming that nothing