Maggie MacKeever by An Eligible Connection

Author:An Eligible Connection [Connection, An Eligible]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“A perfect block!” Delilah repeated firmly. “Upon my word of honor! Why, he made so violent an attack of my virtue that I was forced to defend myself with a frying pan!” She eyed her companion. “Of course you will not use this information but in the most discreet manner. Will you, Jem?”

The young footman, for it was he to whom Delilah spoke, vowed silence. May he be stricken down, Jem said, may his whole family be subject to plagues of caterpillars and locusts if he breathed so much as a word. Delilah professed herself quite satisfied with these assurances. The footman then begged leave to ask how Miss Mannering had come to find herself in a tinkers’ camp in the first place, such a circumstance being beyond his limited comprehension.

“Oh, don’t let that bother you! I have come to the conclusion that among important people, brains as such are rather despised.” Delilah looked thoughtful. “At least they are in young ladies. I don’t know about footmen.” Here Jem dared remark, respectfully, that in his opinion Miss Mannering was quite top of the boughs. Not that it was his place to say so, and he begged pardon for overstepping the mark.

“Fiddle!” responded Miss Mannering, cheerfully. “It is very kind of you to say so, but you are not an important person, Jem. In general, that is! You are very important to me! What were we talking about? Ah, yes! I was going to tell you how I met Johann.”

And so she did, as they proceeded out of the city proper. This was not the first excursion Miss Mannering had undertaken in company with the young footman Jem, who had with considerable subterfuge arranged to be available each time Miss Mannering wished to take the air. It was not that Jem harbored any unsuitable aspirations regarding the object of his adoration; he was content merely to admire her from a very proper distance. Too, Jem had young sisters of his own, and he was well acquainted with the mischief that could be gotten into by frivolous fizgigs. Naturally, he would never have been so presumptuous as to offer Miss Mannering a word of advice, even in situations, such as the present, when Miss Mannering was engaged upon expeditions that would hardly have met with approval from her guardians. In Jem’s opinion, those guardians kept Miss Mannering on much too loose a rein. Apparently they were not aware that she was the most complete hand.

Not that their little expeditions did anyone harm; if anything, the contrary. It was very beneficial for Miss Mannering—and for that matter, for Jem himself—to occasionally escape the oppressive atmosphere of the Duke of Knowles’s bow-fronted house on the Royal Crescent. The duke, however, could not be expected to see the matter in such a light. The duke, in Jem’s opinion, was a pernickety, cantankerous crosspatch. Jem hoped that His Grace would not find out about these little excursions, lest he require his youngest footman’s head on a platter or, even worse, turn him off without a character.

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