[CHAPTER XIX.]
TOXTETH SEEKS AN ALLY.
Mrs. Sanford was so round, so plump, so rosy, that, as she sat enthroned among the carriage-cushions, she might easily have been mistaken for an unusually fine specimen of Dutch cabbage, by the wand of some new Rübezahl endowed with life. The poor lady was much frightened, not at any thing in particular, but in a general way. She had a vague idea that something astounding and destructive might take place at any moment: she had a misty notion that lions and tigers came out of forests to devour people; and she distinctly recalled the fact that her grandfather had once shot a wolf in the neighborhood, perhaps in these very woods which rustled and murmured so ominously behind her.
An unusual situation, even the most trivial, which delivers shallow minds to reflection, is for them full of uneasiness. To be given up to self is the most frightful of catastrophes to him who finds self an utter stranger. If Mrs. Sanford had no great power of reasoning, she was not without a fancy which fear stirred into activity; and, by the time she had been alone five minutes, her terror had become ludicrously great. A squirrel scampering across the road called from her a scream, which was quickly stifled by the thought that an outcry would be likely to attract beasts of prey. A crow flew overhead; and that presager of evil filled her with terror unutterable. The fact that she was alone on a road much travelled, and but three or four miles from her own home, seems an insufficient cause for such fear; but Mrs. Sanford could hardly have suffered more mental anguish if deposited with Daniel in the den of lions.
Suddenly she heard the sound of approaching wheels, and this sign of human proximity revived her drooping courage. As the moments had seemed hours to her, she thought her son had already returned; but a glimpse of the tossing manes of a span of grays told her that it was the Toxteth equipage which approached. Her mind yielded to an entirely new sensation, as a fluff of thistledown is lightly blown about.
"Mrs. Toxteth shall never see me in such a position as this," she said to herself. "I wouldn't demean myself by letting her know who it is."
So the foolish woman, who had, in common with the ostrich, the feeling, that, if her head was concealed, her entire person must be invisible, spread the corner of her shawl over her face, and sat motionless. The carriage drew nearer, and stopped, a man's voice asking who was there. As the veiled figure returned no answer, Clarence Toxteth, for he it was, jumped out, and approached the lady.
"Who is it?" he asked. "Do you want help?"
"No," she answered. "Go away!"