The Double Wager Read Online Free Page B

head had nodded until a veritable shower of hairpins had released wayward strands of mouse-colored hair, but she had won her point.
    Henry, dressed in an unfashionable muslin dress of faded green, a rather wrinkled gray cloak, and a brown bonnet that looked as if the parrot had been in the habit of using it for a perch, sat sullenly in the carriage for the first few miles until a natural ebullience of spirits restored her to cheerfulness.
    In fact, it would have been difficult for anyone to remain sullen and dignified for long in that coach. Miss Manford sat demurely except when, every few minutes, she panicked and imagined that some vital possession had been left behind.
    “Oh, children,” she cried, slapping her gloved palms against her cheeks, “my workbox. I stood it on my bedside table and forgot to instruct the footman to bring it down. How ever will I mend Philip’s stockings when he puts his heels through them?”
    “Calm down, Manny,” that young gentleman replied. “I think I have a hole in my breeches from where the infernal thing has been rubbing against my hip for the past hour.”
    “Oh, bless you, dearest boy,” she sighed in relief. “And do please watch your language in front of Sir Peter and Lady Marian.”
    “Damn your impudence!” said a high, cross voice.
    “Oh, dear me,” wailed Miss Manford. “What are we to do about Oscar?”
    Philip and Penelope were rolling around in unholy glee.
    Miss Manfords hand suddenly flew to her mouth and her eyes grew round with horror. “Oscar’s pink blanket!” she exclaimed. “It was in the schoolroom. You know, children, that he will never fall asleep with any other cover over his cage.”
    “Oh, Manny darling, will you relax and enjoy the scenery?” Henry chided, laughing lightly. “Brutus has it under him on the floor. And really he is being remarkably quiet when one considers that he has not been exercised today. Brutus /” she yelled suddenly, throwing herself forward to wrestle determinedly with the happy canine who was cheerfully chewing away a large comer of the blanket.
    For the next few minutes pandemonium broke loose in the narrow confines of the ponderous old carriage. Penelope pounced on the hind quarters of the dog and tried, in vain, to drag him backward. Philip threw himself astride the dog’s forepart and attempted, equally in vain, to lift him off the blanket. Henry tugged at the offending article and scolded the dog. Brutus, delirious with happiness over this new game, wagged his tail vigorously, wriggled ecstatically under the combined weight of the twins, and managed to bark loudly in Henry’s face while keeping a firm hold on the frayed pink blanket. Miss Manford s hands flapped ineffectually while she chanted, “Bless my soul!” to a God who would have been deafened had he been foolish enough to listen. Oscar stumped up and down the floor of his cage, shrieking “Gosh-a-gorry!” to anyone who cared to take note.
    “I say,” said Giles, lowering his head from his horse’s back and peering cheerfully through a window, “a spot of bother, is there?” It said a lot for the normal behavior of the family that he did not seem unduly alarmed.
    It was a flushed, disheveled, and tired family and its entourage that finally disembarked from the carriage in the driveway of Sir Peter’s house in Cavendish Square.
    Lady Tallant was never afterward to know how she kept her dignified composure under the onslaught. She tried to administer a graceful hug on each of the twins and lay a cool cheek next to theirs, but each of them squirmed away, threw a “Hello there, Marian,” in her direction, and proceeded to busy themselves with removing the pets.
    “You won’t mind having Brutus here, will you, Marian?” yelled Penelope.
    Philip’s hind quarters were poking out the doorway as he tried to coax his pet out of the warm interior of the coach.
    “Brutus?” she asked with a bright smile.
    “The twins’ dog,” Henry