"Then I'm to consider myself one of your experiments?"
"Decidedly," laughed Lesley. "And I mean you to be a success—a great success. Now I'm going to Auntie. I think we'd better travel in different cars, for she hasn't quite got used yet to the idea of a gentleman chauffeur. I've told her that they're the fashion, and she's prepared to take you on faith. But the first time she travels in your company you had better be in the motor."
With that, the girl pressed a railway ticket into his hand, and he was left not knowing whether he were more inclined to laughter or to cursing. But the train came at this moment, and he had no time to analyse his mood.
At Louisville a carriage was waiting for Mrs. Loveland and Miss Dearmer. It was a brougham, and there was room in it only for themselves and their handbags. The chauffeur was told off to a hired vehicle, for which his employers would pay.
Once outside the suburbs of the big town, the country was pretty, and reminded Val so strongly of England that it brought on an attack of homesickness.
The Hill Farm might almost have been an English farm, with its rambling, red-brick house, apparently of the Georgian period, its square-paned windows and its pillared porch draped with a tangle of grapevine and Virginia creeper. Val had seen farm-houses at home, converted by the younger sons of gentlemen into pleasant if modest mansions; and the gracious elms, the sturdy old oaks and generous apple trees might all have been transplanted from an English landscape.
Val arrived only a few minutes later than Lesley and Mrs. Loveland; and the girl was waiting for him in the open door-way when his hack drove up.
"This is a big, old house," said Lesley, coming out into the porch—"at least, it's old for America. It's stood for about a hundred and fifty years, and there's lots of room in it. You will live in the west wing. In a few minutes Uncle Wally will show you where to go. Already we've given directions to have your quarters got ready, but while the servants are busy there you may as well come out with me, and have a look at—at—Sidney's new car. I hope you'll like it. Here, Uncle Wally, take Mr. Gordon's bag."
This order was a surprise to Loveland. He had supposed that the "Uncle Wally," who was presently to be his guide, would turn out to be a relative of Miss Dearmer's, perhaps the master of the house; but it was a very ancient and very black darkey, dressed in a sombre old-fashioned livery, who came forward, all white grin and low bows.
The knuckly black hand relieved Loveland of the shabby bag, but there was no contempt either for the bag or its owner on the mild old face of the grey-headed negro, who was as perfect and well trained a servant in his way as any butler in an English country house. Evidently he, too, had been told that this was a "gentleman chauffeur," to be treated like a gentleman; and Loveland was grateful to his hostess, feeling a sudden impulse towards happiness, until with a shock, he remembered Sidney Cremer.