“Ah, if I knowed what you was at, Nery!”
Neaera intimated that it was simply a matter of mutual accommodation. “And there’s really no time to be lost,” she said, plaintively. “I’m being robbed every day.”
“Widows has hard times,” said Mrs. Bort. And Neaera did not think it necessary to say how soon her hard times were coming to an end.
“Come agin to-morrer afternoon, and I’ll tell ye,” was Mrs. Bort’s ultimatum. “And mind you don’t get into mischief.”
“Why afternoon?” asked Neaera.
“‘Cause I’m washing,” said Mrs. Bort, snappishly. “That’s why.”
Neaera in vain implored an immediate answer. Mrs. Bort said a day could not matter, and that, if Neaera pressed her farther, she should consider it an indication that something was “up,” and refuse to go at all. Neaera was silenced, and sadly returned to her hotel.
“How I hate that good, good woman!” she cried. “I’ll never see her again as long as I live, after to-morrow. Oh, I should like to hit her!”
The propulsions of cause upon cause are, as Bacon has said, infinite. If Mrs. Bort had not washed—in the technical sense, of course—on that particular Friday, Neaera would have come and gone—perhaps even Mrs. Bort might have gone too—before the train brought George Neston to Liverpool, and his eager inquiries landed him at Mrs. Bort’s abode. As it was, Mrs. Bort’s little servant bade him wait in the parlour, as her mistress was talking to a female in the kitchen. The little servant thought “female” the politest possible way of describing any person who was not a man, and accorded the title to Neaera on account of her rustling robes and gold-tipped parasol.