“Very much to my advantage,” the Duke replied. “If you had not been there and told me very clearly that Daltry and his friends were crooks, I might have been stupid enough to – agree to his ‘proposition’ as he called it.”
“Fox! Ferret! Baboon!” Ilitta recited. “I am glad that I was not mistaken in seeing them as they really were!”
“Well one good thing is that they will not trouble us again,” the Duke said. “I can only hope that our host tonight will not turn out to be a man-eating tiger!”
“I think that is unlikely,” Ilitta laughed, “but if he is, I will certainly warn you.”
They lingered a little longer in the farmhouse and talking to Ilitta made the Duke laugh in a whole-hearted way that was different from the sophisticated laughter with which in the past he had greeted the innuendos
