Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/161

 But this catastrophe had another side. And to my mind it was not unpleasant. It was supplied by the behaviour of Miss Prue. When the cheerful Corporal was in the midst of his depredations in the closet, that young lady grew a lively red with rage, and doubled up her not unsubstantial but mittened fists, and shook them in the Corporal's direction.

"Gad!" she whispered, whilst Emblem and myself had to put forth desperate efforts to restrain her, "I would give a golden guinea to be Anthony Dare for just two minutes. I'd smash as many bones in his drunken carcase as he hath smashed these bits of furniture."

Captain Grantley's threat was executed to the letter. They sought the prisoner or evidence of him in every nook and cranny from the cellar to the skylight, but became none the wiser for their pains. Ruefully they told this to their commander, fuming in his fetters. I also went and told the Captain this.

Conducting my friend Miss Prue to the tea-table of my aunt, I was charmed more than I can express to notice how immediately this young lady ordered her bearing and her conversation to a harmony that accorded with the dowager's personality and her own. Launching these ladies properly on a topic on which they were both well qualified to speak, to wit, the relations then existing between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, I tripped forth to the library to carry my compliments to its oc