I lost the rest, because Mrs. James came in, ready to start. We had been standing together in the little sitting-room at the back of the house while she gave last directions to Miss Hubbell. And I had on my new serge, of course, with a blouse more fit for an angel than Barrie MacDonald; and a gray coat and a gray hood with a long gray veil floating out from it—all the same gray as the car, and chosen to match. I couldn't help thinking, when I put on the hood before the curate's looking-glass, that in spite of a green crack across my face and one purple splash on my eye (it's a very antique glass, not used to girls' complexions) I really wasn't so bad. Oh, if only mother is pleased! But of course all mothers must be pleased with their children. One reads a great deal in books about mother's love.
We bought two small trunks yesterday, one for Mrs. James and one for me, of the same gray colour as our cloaks, both made especially for a motor-car: and Mr. Somerled has a gray trunk too, smaller than mine, also a thing he calls a suit-case. This morning he brought us each a present of a little gray handbag, fitted with brushes and combs and a mirror, and tiny bottles for eau-de-cologne. My fittings look like gold, though I suppose of course they are only gilded; and Mrs. James's are silver. She thought it would hurt his feelings if we refused to accept his presents, though she was brought up to believe that a lady must never take anything from a gentleman except books, sweets, and flowers. However, she says she has often found it difficult to conduct life according to rules of etiquette, as there are so many complications they've forgotten to put in.
It was only half-past eight when we started, for we wanted to see the Cathedral and the Castle. We were going to the Cathedral first, and on the way we had to pass a big motor garage which has always made my heart beat just to see, whenever Heppie and I have come to town shopping. I used to wonder what it would be like to sail through the wide doorway in a car of my own. Poor me, in my "glass retort," with little chance, it seemed, of escaping from the dragon to travel in any sort of mobile except the pillow-mobile into which I used often, to jump at night, and flash away to far-off countries of dreamland.
Now, poking its large nose out of that garage was a gray motor (but not so nice a gray as ours) conducted by a wisp of a chauffeur. He was driving two passengers, and I bounced on the springy back seat of our car with surprise as I recognized them. Down went my head mechanically in as polite a bow as if I hadn't been turned out of her house by Mrs. West, though, when I realized what I was doing, I was afraid she might pretend not to know me. It must make one feel such a worm to be ignored when one has just grinned and ducked! But I needn't have feared. Mr. Norman took off his cap as impressively as if I were really the princess of the knight's fairy dream; and Mrs. West bowed, with a sweet, sad look first at Mr. Somerled, then finishing up with me—just the reproachful, yet resigned martyr-look a queen ought to give a crowd of rebellious subjects on her way to the scaffold where their cruelty had sent her.
Of course, if I had to show this to Mr. Norman, and get him to criticise my writing as he offered to do, I couldn't put in such things; so perhaps it's as well I shall have to worry on alone.
Mr. Somerled, who was driving our car (with Vedder by his side, tooting a musical horn), took off his cap as beautifully as Mr. Norman did, without upsetting the steering, though there seemed to be a hundred things and creatures of all descriptions in front of the motor's big bright nose at that particular moment. I'd never realized until then what a crowded, busy place Carlisle is; because it seems that you have a different set of emotions and impressions especially for use in motor-cars, and you have to use them there, whether you like or not. I suppose they lay quiescent in people for thousands of years, between the epoch of exciting prehistoric beasts and automobiles; but now they come into play often enough to make up for lost time. Not that I was afraid in the car, even at first: only it did seem as if all the things that moved on the face of the earth were aiming directly at us, to say nothing of what we ourselves were doing to them. Luckily for me, I trusted Mr. Somerled; and perhaps Mrs. James hadn't quite arrived at that blissful state, or else she was naturally more timid, for she held on so fast to the arm of the seat that she tore a glove, and had a strained expression about her eyes and nostrils, though she beamed in a painstaking way whenever she caught me looking at her.
"Who is that pretty blond lady and the handsome dark young man you just bowed to?" she asked, when we had passed the gray car that was like a bad copy of ours.
I told her that the man was Mr. Basil Norman and the lady was Mrs. West, who had quarrelled with Mr. Somerled yesterday for some reason he wouldn't explain, but probably because she couldn't be bothered with me.
"Poor thing, she looked ready to cry!" sighed Mrs. James. "By this time, I dare say, she's sorry for what she did, and praying for a chance to make up."
It would be Christian to pray for it too; but if making up means having her in this car, I should have to pound the prayer into my heart like a nail.