“Are you a daughter of Dr. Randolph Sedgewick of Farley in Buckinghamshire?” demanded the lady in great excitement, giving Dorothy a vigorous shake.
“Yes—that is my father.” Dorothy smiled happily into the face that was so near to her own—it was so pleasant to encounter some one who knew her father.
“My dear, your father is a very old friend of mine. I am Mrs. Peter Wilson, of Fleetwood Park, near Sevenoaks. It is quite possible you may not have heard him speak of me by my married name; but you have surely heard him talk of Rosie O’Flynn?”
“That wild girl Rosie O’Flynn, is that the one you mean?” asked Dorothy, smiling broadly at the recollection of some of the stories her father had told of the madcap doings of the aforesaid Rosie.
“Yes, yes; but I have altered a good deal since those days,” said Mrs. Wilson with a gasping sigh. “I should have welcomed an experience of this sort then, but now it has shaken me up very badly indeed.”
“May I go with Mrs. Wilson to the Grand?” asked Dorothy, turning to Miss Groome with entreaty in her eyes. What a wonderful sort of adventure this was, that she should have had her father’s old friend flung straight into her arms!
“Yes, certainly you may go,” said Miss Groome, who was decidedly relieved at hearing of the social status of the lady. “But, Dorothy, you must come back in the car that takes Mrs. Wilson to the Grand, for I am sure you must be wet. It will be very unsafe for you to be long without changing. Ah! here comes the driver, and he has another car coming along after him; that is fortunate, because Mrs. Wilson will not have to wait.”
“If I have to send Dorothy straight back to-day, may I have the pleasure of her company to tea to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock?” asked Mrs. Wilson, holding out her hand with such friendliness that Miss Groome at once gave consent.
The driver had secured a taxi from the Crown Inn at Sowergate, and the driver of the fresh car took his way with infinite care along the wreckage-strewn road to Ilkestone.
Mrs. Wilson was fearfully nervous. She kept crying out; she would have jumped out more than once during the journey if Dorothy had not held her down by sheer force of arm, beseeching her to be calm, and promising that no harm should come to her.