Wynyard made no reply; in his opinion the machine would have been dear at fifty. It was evident that some unscrupulous rascal had foisted an old-fashioned rattle-trap upon these ignorant and unsuspicious ladies.
“My sister is so nervous,” exclaimed Miss Susan, “and I don’t think she will use the car as much as she supposes. Even in a cab she sits all the time with her eyes closed and her hands clenched. She would never have purchased the motor, only our brother-in-law, the parson here—who is rather a wag in his way—chaffed her, and, just to contradict him, she bought one within a week!”
Miss Susan was evidently a talker, and Wynyard listened in civil silence as, chattering incessantly, she accompanied him down the drive and out into the village street.
“Now I am going to take you to your lodgings, where I hope you will be comfortable,” and she looked at him with a kindly little smile. “There is where we lived for thirty years,” pointing to a pretty old red cottage, with a paved walk through a charming garden—at present gay with daffodils and crocus.
“Do you know I planted every one of those bulbs myself,” she said; “I’m a great gardener—my sister only potters. The gardens at the Manor have run to seed like the house, and it will take a long time to put them straight. After we left it, on my father’s death, the tenant was a farmer, and only lately my sister has bought it back. A relative we never saw left Bella all his fortune, and money comes just a little strange to her at first. We have always been poor—and so sometimes she—is——”
Miss Susan faltered, blushed, and came to a full stop; she felt conscious that she was forgetting herself, and talking to this stranger—a man-servant—as if he were her equal! Her tongue always ran away with her; unfortunately, she could not help it, and it was absolutely true, as Bella repeatedly told her, “she was much too familiar with the lower orders!”
“Ahem! I dare say you will find Ottinge dull after London. Do you know London?” she inquired, after a conscious silence.
“Yes, miss, I know it well.”
“There’s no one much of your stamp in the village; they are all Ottinge born and bred, and you seem to be a superior sort of young man.”
“I don’t think I’m at all superior, miss; anyway, I’ve got to earn my bread the same as other people.”