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NEWARK WAS LEFT BEHIND AND THE POST-CHAISE-AND-FOUR entered on a stretch of f lat country which offered little to attract the eye, or occasion reaze from the landscape and addressed her co in his corner of the chaise so the back of the nearest post-boy ‘How tedious it is to be sitting still for so many hours at a stretch!’ she remarked ‘When do we reach Grantham, Perry?’
Her brother yawned ‘Lord, I don’t know! It was you ould go to London’
Miss Taverner made no reply to this, but picked up a Traveller’s Guide froan to flutter the leaves over Young Sir Peregrine yawned again, and observed that the new pair of wheelers, put in at Newark, were good-sized strengthy beasts, very different from the last pair, which had both of them been touched in the wind
Miss Taverner was deep in the Traveller’s Guide, and agreed to this without raising her eyes froe
She was a fine young woht, and had been used for the past four years to hearing herself proclaiirl She could not, however, admire her own beauty, which was of a type she was inclined to despise She had rather have had black hair; she thought the fairness of her gold curls insipid Happily, her brows and lashes were dark, and her eyes which were startlingly blue (in the manner of a wax doll, she once scornfully told her brother) had a directness and a fire which gave a great deal of character to her face At first glance one lance would inevitably discover the intelligence in her eyes, and the decided air of resolution in the curve of her mouth
She was dressed neatly, but not in the first style of fashion, in a plain round gown of French cambric, frilled round the neck with scolloped lace; and a close mantle of twilled sarcenet A poke-bonnet of basket-ith a striped velvet ribbon rather charloves were drawn over her hands, and buttoned tightly round her wrists
Her brother, who had resumed his slumbrous scrutiny of the post-boy’s back, resembled her closely His hair was more inclined to brown, and his eyes less deep in colour than hers, but he er than Miss Taverner, and, either from habit or careless ness, was very s as she chose
‘It is fourteen miles fro her eyes froht it had been so far’ She bent over the book again ‘It says here – it is Kearsley’s Entertaining Guide, you knohich you procured for h – that it is a neat and populous town on the River Witham It is supposed to have been a Ro up I must say, I should like to explore there if we have the time, Perry’
‘Oh, lord, you know ruins always look the sa his hands into the pockets of his buckskin breeches ‘I tell you what it is, Judith: if you’re set on poking about all the castles on the e shall be a full week on the road I’ forward to London’
‘Very well,’ sub the Traveller’s Guide, and laying it on the seat ‘We will bespeak an early breakfast at the George, then, and you must tell them at what hour you will have the horses put-to’
‘I thought ere to lie at the Angel,’ rerine
‘No,’ replied his sister decidedly ‘You have forgot the wretched account the Mincee and I wrote to engage our roo me of the fuss and to-do she had once when they would have had her go up two pair of stairs to a miserable apartment at the back of the house’
Sir Peregrine turned his head to grin amicably at her ‘Well, I don’t fancy they’ll succeed in fobbing you off with a back room, Ju’
‘Certainly not,’ replied Miss Taverner, with a severity some what belied by the twinkle in her eye
‘No, that’s certain,’ pursued Peregrine ‘But what I’ to see, my love, is the way you’ll handle the old man’
Miss Taverner looked a little anxious‘I could handle Papa, Perry, couldn’t I? If only Lord Worth is not a subject to gout! I think that was the only tieable’
‘All old rine
Miss Taverner sighed, acknowledging the truth of this pronouncement
‘It’s rine, ‘that he don’t want us to come to town Come to think of it, didn’t he say so?’