[Evan Harrington by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link bookEvan Harrington CHAPTER X 9/19
You'll find me at one of the inns-the Green Dragon.' In return for this speech, the waggoner favoured him with a stare, followed by the exclamation: 'Oh, no! dang that!' 'Why, what's the matter ?' quoth Evan. 'You en't goin' to be off, for to leave me and Gearge in the lurch there, with that ther' young woman, in that ther' pickle!' returned the waggoner. Evan made an appeal to his reason, but finding that impregnable, he pulled out his scanty purse to guarantee his sincerity with an offer of pledgemoney.
The waggoner waved it aside.
He wanted no money, he said. 'Look heer,' he went on; 'if you're for a start, I tells ye plain, I chucks that ther' young woman int' the road.' Evan bade him not to be a brute. 'Nark and crop!' the waggoner doggedly ejaculated. Very much surprised that a fellow who appeared sound at heart, should threaten to behave so basely, Evan asked an explanation: upon which the waggoner demanded to know what he had eyes for: and as this query failed to enlighten the youth, he let him understand that he was a man of family experience, and that it was easy to tell at a glance that the complaint the young woman laboured under was one common to the daughters of Eve.
He added that, should an emergency arise, he, though a family man, would be useless: that he always vacated the premises while those incidental scenes were being enacted at home; and that for him and George Stokes to be left alone with the young woman, why they would be of no more service to her than a couple of babies newborn themselves. He, for his part, he assured Evan, should take to his heels, and relinquish waggon, and horses, and all; while George probably would stand and gape; and the end of it would be, they would all be had up for murder.
He diverged from the alarming prospect, by a renewal of the foregoing alternative to the gentleman who had constituted himself the young woman's protector.
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