“And she’d tear my hats from hers, and that would be vastly the greater calamity of the two, forgive me for saying so, my Lord.” “See here,” said he, “I’ll face the bagmen for the pleasure of your conversation, for, odd’s my life, you’ve a sparkle about you that’s as good as champagne after the dreary road! I’ll tell them to lay your place beside mine in the coffee-room, and you’ll season my supper to me with that spicy tongue of yours.” Pamela said she was a poor girl, and she hoped she knew her place, that my Lord was vastly condescending, and that she’d have to take what seat was given her; which remarks, my Lord, rightly understanding to be an oblique acceptance, greeted with laughter and applause, and went gaily towards the inn after her, admiring her generous, well-knit shape, and taking off his hat with a mock flourish as she modestly stood back to let him enter first. The summer evening was warm, and the odours of viands potent in the coffee-room. The tables were crowded; there was an immense buzz of voices, and clatter of knives and forks, and a running to and fro of aproned drawers, and sturdy bare-armed wenches. Pamela stood at the door, and looked in discontentedly. She was as little squeamish as any healthy young woman of her class; she left “vapours” and “qualms” to her betters. But the long day had tired her, and there was my Lord, with his wig askew, and a couple of bottles before him, and an air of having already done some justice to them. It was all very well to have chosen the propriety of the public room, but it might have its drawbacks. A poor girl never knew what spiteful eyes might be watching. It would do her no good if some loose tongue were to start a bit of scandal about her: “Miss Pamela Pounce behaving shameful with my Lord Kilcroney, as brazen as you like, before everybody.” It would always be, of course, the poor girl who behaved shameful, never the half-tipsy nobleman. Such is the way of the world. “And as like as not,” went on Pamela to herself--she had a vivid and swift imagination--“the next thing will be: ‘They left Weymouth together. ’Twas a regular elopement.’ No, thank you, Pamela, my girl. It ain’t good enough for us to sit next to my Lord in his cups, and eat beef-steak pudding--a dish I never was partial to--on a hot night--and lose my character to boot.” She whisked round and out through the luggage-piled hall into the yard, where, by the gate which gave upon the river meadow, she had marked a bench erected round an old tree stump. “I’ll sit here,” resolved Miss Pounce, suiting the action to the thought. “And, by and by, when those creatures have done gorging within, I’ll have a little supper by my own. Lord, how vastly more pleasant it is out here!”