The summer passed away, and the autumn, and when Lettice lighted her first study fire, one cold day at the end of October, she could look forward to the coming winter without misgiving. In four months she had done fifty pounds' worth of work, and she had commissions which would keep her busy for six months more, and would yield at least twice as much money. Mr. Graham's seeds were beginning to send up their blades; and, in short, Lettice was in a very fair way of earning not only a living, but also a good literary repute.
One call, indeed, was made upon her resources in a very unexpected manner. She had put by four five-pound notes of clear saving—it is at such moments that our unexpected liabilities are wont to find us out—and she was just congratulating herself on that first achievement in the art of domestic thrift when her maid Milly knocked at her door, and announced a visitor.
"Please, miss, here is Mrs. Bundlecombe of Thorley!"
Mrs. Bundlecombe was a bookseller in her own right, in a village some three miles from Angleford. Her husband had died four years before Mr. Campion, and his widow made an effort to carry on the business. The rector in his palmy days had had many dealings with Mr. Bundlecombe, who was of some note in the world as a collector of second-hand books; but, as Lettice had no reason to think that he had bought anything of Mrs. Bundlecombe personally, she could not imagine what the object of this visit might be.
"Did she say what her business was, Milly?"
"No, miss. Only she said she had heard you were living here, and she would like to see you, please."
Milly's relations had lived in Thorley. Thus she knew Mrs. Bundlecombe by sight, and, being somewhat inquisitive by nature, she had already tried to draw the visitor into conversation, but without success.
"Show her in," said Lettice, after a moment's pause. It was pleasant, after all, to meet a "kent face" in London solitudes, and she felt quite kindly towards Mrs. Bundlecombe, whom she had sometimes seen over the counter in her shop at Thorley. So she received her with gentle cordiality.
Mrs. Bundlecombe showed symptoms of embarrassment at the quiet friendliness of Lettice's manners. She was not a person of aristocratic appearance, for she was short and very stout, and florid into the bargain; but her broad face was both shrewd and kindly, and her grey eyes were observant and good-humored. Her grey hair was arranged in three flat curls, fastened with small black combs on each side of her face, which was rosy and wrinkled like a russet apple, and her full purple skirt, her big bonnet, adorned with bows of scarlet ribbon, and her much be-furbelowed and be-spangled dolman, attested the fact that she had donned her best clothes for the occasion of her visit, and that Thorley fashions differed from those of the metropolis. She wore gloves with one button, moreover, and boots with elastic sides.
Mrs. Bundlecombe seemed to have some difficulty in coming to the point. She told Lettice much Angleford news, including a piece of information that interested her a good deal: namely, that the old squire, after many years of suffering, was dead, and that his nephew, Mr. Brooke Dalton, had at last succeeded to the property. "He's not there very much, however: he leaves the house pretty much to his sister, Miss Edith Dalton; but it's to be hoped that he'll marry soon and bring a lady to the place."