Ask Me No Questions by Patricia Veryan Page B

'Sides, they're called stagecoaches now."
    His more adventurously inclined brother scoffed, "Highwaymen don't
ride
on stagecoaches, stupid. They
rob
'em!"
    "Even so, you should not make such unkind judgments," said Ruth. "People are seldom what they look to be. The gentleman might very well be a—a parson. Or perhaps a dancing master."
    As she had hoped, this sally relieved the shadow of anxiety on two small faces and awoke shrieks of laughter.
    Grace did not join in the merriment. In her view, the outside passenger had looked to be just what she was sure he was: a bailiff. She thought with deep thankfulness, 'In the nick of time! Thank God, and Mr. Tummet!'
    Very soon, Samuel Coachman set them down outside the stagecoach station on the southern edge of Shoeburyness. Their parting was painful, for the man had been employed by Thomas Allington since his youth. Loathing the deceit she must practice, Ruth refused to allow him to wait with them until the London coach he believed they were to travel on was ready to leave, though her heart was touched when he insisted he must stay to protect his "family."
    "You are so good, so loyal, dear Sam," she said, her voice breaking. "But you must get back to Lingways and help William store my furniture. Besides," she added, seeing tears glittering in Thorpe's blue eyes, "Miss Grace and I have two fine young gentlemen to protect us."
    Jacob's troubled face brightened a little, and Thorpe, at once the more mischievous and tender-hearted of the pair, sniffed, and said in his best "manly" voice that Samuel need not be worried. "Jake an' me would die a awful death 'fore we'd let anyone hurt my Aunty, or Miss Grace," he growled. And in the next instant he had hurled himself into the coachman's ready arms, and was sobbing out how much he would miss him.
    They all watched sadly as the familiar coach rattled around the corner and out of sight. Nobody spoke. Scared and bewildered as this last link with the life they'd known vanished, the boys pressed closer to Ruth. She hugged them and fought tears as she said huskily that they were not to worry; they were going to a very beautiful place in the country. And with an inner prayer that she spoke truth, she promised that everything was going to be all right.
    A quarter hour after Samuel's departure the shabby coach and pair Grace had hired pulled into the kennel, and the coachman scrambled down and began to load their luggage into the boot.
    Puzzled, Jacob said, "But I thought we was to go on the London
stagecoach
, Aunty?"
    "Mrs. Allington was obliged to change her mind," said Grace. "But this will be much nicer."
    It was a small change perhaps, but the twins were deeply afraid and after an exchanged glance, as if by mutual consent, once again they clung desperately to their aunt's skirts.
    How helpless they were, poor little boys, thought Ruth; their young lives already sadly mauled by Fate, and now quite at the mercy of the decisions she made—or that the authorities forced upon her. She relaxed an earlier edict and said they might ride on the box beside the coachman for the first stage at least, so long as they obeyed him with no arguing. Even this glorious prospect failed to cheer them, and not until they had made sure that she and Grace were indeed inside and the coachman had closed the door did they tussle to be first one on the box.
    The carriage pulled into traffic and turned to the west and Tilbury, where they would be conveyed by ferryboat across the Thames to Gravesend. The clear voices of the twins could be heard upraised in eager questioning, but inside it was quiet, neither woman speaking for a few minutes, both plagued by similar thoughts.
    "Poor wee lads," sighed Grace then. "So fearful, they are. But the farm will cheer them, surely. What is it like, Mrs. A.?"
    Ruth took a deep breath. 'Now!' she thought, and admitted, "There is no farm."
    "But—but—you said—"
    " 'Twas what I thought at the time. Now—the boys come with us."
    "