That authority recommended, with the utmost positiveness of advice, that Robbie should take a seat in his coach when he left for the North that night.
"But you don't start till nine o'clock, they tell me ?" said Robbie.
"Well, man, what of that ?" replied the driver; "yon two men will have to sleep to-night, I reckon; and they'll put up to a sartenty somewhear, and that's how we'll come abreast on 'em.

It's no use tearan like a crazy thing." The driver had no misgivings; his conjecture seemed reasonable, and whether his plan were feasible or not, it was the only one available.
So Robbie had to make a virtue of a necessity, as happens to many a man of more resource.
He was perhaps in his secret heart the better reconciled to a few hours' delay in his present quarters, because he fancied that the little chambermaid had exhibited some sly symptoms of partiality for his society in the few passages of conversation which he had exchanged with her.
She was a bright, pert young thing, with just that dash of freedom in her manners which usually comes of the pursuit of her public calling; and it is only fair to Robbie's modesty to say that he had not deceived himself very grossly in his estimate of the interest he had suddenly excited in her eyes.

It was probably a grievous dereliction of duty to think of a love encounter, however blameless, at a juncture like this--not to speak of the gravity of the offence of forgetting the absent Liza.

But Robbie was undergoing a forced interlude in the march; the lady who dominated his affections was unhappily too far away to appease them, and he was not the sort of young fellow who could resist the assault of a pair of coquettish black eyes.
Returning from the taproom to announce his intention of waiting for the coach, Robbie was invited to the fire in the kitchen,--a privilege for which the extreme coldness of the day was understood to account.
Here he lit a pipe, and discoursed on the route that would probably be pursued by his friends.
It was obvious that Ralph and Sim had not taken the direct road home to Wythburn, for if they had done so he must have met them as he came from Staveley.

There was the bare possibility that he had missed them by going round the fields to the old woman's cottage; but this seemed unlikely.
"Are you quite sure it's an _old man_ you're after ?" said the girl, with a dig of emphasis that was meant to insinuate a doubt of Robbie's eagerness to take so much trouble in running after anything less enticing than one of another sex who might not be old.
Robbie protested on his honor that _he_ was never known to run after young women,--a statement which did not appear to find a very ready acceptance.