Let's have revenges and injuries, and all
that, and we shall get on twice as fast. Now you talk, indeed!'
'Ha ha ha! The captain,' added Hugh, 'has thoughts of carrying off a
woman in the bustle, and--ha ha ha!--and so have I!'
Mr Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face, observing
that as a general principle he objected to women altogether, as being
unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was no calculating with any
certainty, and who were never in the same mind for four-and-twenty hours
at a stretch. He might have expatiated on this suggestive theme at
much greater length, but that it occurred to him to ask what connection
existed between the proposed expedition and Barnaby's being posted at
the stable-door as sentry; to which Hugh cautiously replied in these
words:
'Why, the people we mean to visit, were friends of his, once upon a
time, and I know that much of him to feel pretty sure that if he thought
we were going to do them any harm, he'd be no friend to our side, but
would lend a ready hand to the other. So I've persuaded him (for I know
him of old) that Lord George has picked him out to guard this place
to-morrow while we're away, and that it's a great honour--and so he's on
duty now, and as proud of it as if he was a general.
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