The Highgrader

"I'd rather go with you."

He delighted in her answer.

Farquhar was taking an early morning stroll, arm in arm with Lady Jim, when he caught sight of them.

"Look, Di!"

Both of the lovers knew how to walk. Lady Farquhar, watching them, thought she had never seen as fine a pair of untamed human beings. In his step was the fine free swing of the hillman, and the young woman breasted the slope lightly as a faun.

The Englishman chuckled. "You're beaten, Di. The highwayman wins."

"Nonsense," she retorted sharply, but with anxiety manifest in her frown.

"Fact, just the same. He's coming to tell us he means to take our little girl to his robber den."

"I believe you'd actually let him," she said scornfully.

"Even you can't stop him. It's written in the books. Not sure I'd interfere if I could. For a middle-aged Pharisee with the gout I'm incurably romantic. It's the child's one great chance for happiness. But I wish to the deuce he wasn't a highgrader."

"She shan't sacrifice herself if I can prevent it," Lady Farquhar insisted stanchly.

"I 'member a girl who sacrificed herself for a line lieutenant without a shilling to call his own," he soliloquized aloud. "Would have him, and did, by Jove! Three deaths made him Lord Farquhar later, but she married the penniless subaltern."

"I've always been glad I did." She squeezed his arm fondly. "But this is different, James."

Kilmeny and Moya stopped. The young man doffed his gray felt hat and bowed.

"Mornin', Lady Farquhar--Lord Farquhar. We've come to ask your permission for our marriage."

"Mornin', rebels. Fancy I'll have to refuse it," cut back Farquhar, eyes twinkling. For this bold directness pleased and amused him.

"That would distress us extremely," answered Kilmeny with a genial smile.

"But would not affect your plans, I understand you to mean."

"You catch the idea exactly, sir."

Lady Farquhar entered the conversation. "Are you planning to go to prison with him, Moya, when he is convicted of highgrading?" she asked pleasantly.

Moya told in three sentences of what her lover had done. The Englishman wrung Kilmeny's hand cordially.

"By Jove, you reform thoroughly when you go about it. Don't think I'd have enjoyed writing that check for Miss Joyce. Leaves you strapped, does it?"

"Dead broke," came the very cheerful reply.

"But of course Moya has some money," said Lady Farquhar quietly.

The Westerner winced. "Wish she hadn't. It's the only thing I have to forgive her."

Farquhar lifted his eyebrows. "Di," he remonstrated.

His wife came to time with a frank apology. "That was downright nasty of me, Mr. Kilmeny. I withdraw it. None the less, I think Moya would be throwing herself away. Do you realize what you are proposing? She's been used to the best ever since she was born. Have you the means to supply her needs? Or are you considering a Phyllida and Corydon idyll in a cottage?"