“This is the place, ma’am. It doesn’t seem possible, but this is the place. I only hope Battles will be able to hold the hosses; but they don’t like it.”
“Just stand aside, keep my dress from the wheels, and mind your own business, Jacob,” said Mrs. Carter, with an imperious wave of her hand, as she rolled herself through the door of the carriage, and lighted heavily on the pavement. “If I know myself intimately you were hired to open doors, and shut your own mouth. So this is the place, is it? And a lovely place it is! Quite a rustic cottage! There, now you may open the gate!”
While she was delivering this reprimand to her servant, Mrs. Carter shook out her flounces, drew the lace shawl more jauntily over her shoulder, and swept through the gate with all the magnificence and glory of an empress about to honor some subject by her presence. Half way up the path she remembered what was due to herself, and stepped back into a flower-bed, waving Jacob forward with her hand.
The tall footman cast a look of unutterable disgust at his fellow-servant on the box, and, striding up the path, gave a pull at the humble little bell that filled the whole house with its tinkling. Mrs. Laurence came to the door, grim and gaunt, but neat in her dress, and composed in manner.
“Does Mrs. Laurence live here?” inquired the tall footman, striking his gloves together, as if the bell-handle had left offensive dust on them.
“I am Mrs. Laurence.”
“Ah, indeed! This is the lady, marum.”
Mrs. Carter came forward, smiling blandly, and holding out her straw-colored glove with an air of sublime condescension.
Mrs. Laurence took the tightly-gloved hand stiffly enough, and let it fall from her clasp without a smile. She had suffered, this poor widow, and smiles did not come easily to her face; but if cold, she was well-bred, and stood aside that her strange guest might enter the little passage-way, and pass through the open parlor-door.
“How cozy—how exquisite!” exclaimed Mrs. Carter, glancing around at the snow white muslin curtains and the neat furniture, which would have been poverty-stricken in other houses. “No wonder my dear brother was so charmed. ‘Such a contrast!’ he said, when he found me in my ‘boudoir bower chamber,’ he says, they used to call it, in old times. ‘Such a contrast,’ says he, ‘between you and them—between this and that! You with everything grand and sumptuous; they nothing but taste—pure, aesthetic taste! Their little room is a bijou!’ Just as I find it!”