Well, our journey was soon arranged on a grand scale. Pickering lent us his new coach, just home from the makers in Cow Street. It was cushioned and curtained and had springs in place of thorough-braces. It also had glass in the windows and doors; a luxury then little known in England even among the nobles. There was a prejudice against its use in coach windows because of the fact that two or three old ladies had cut their faces in trying to thrust their heads through it.
The new coach was a wonderful vehicle, and Frances and I, as well as Betty, were very proud of our grandeur. Pickering sent along with the coach and horses two lusty fellows as drivers, and gave us a hamper almost large enough to feed a company of soldiers. I was to pay all expenses on the road.
Almost at the last hour Sir Richard concluded not to go, but insisted that Frances, Bettina, and I take the journey by ourselves. As Pickering offered no objection, Frances shrugged her shoulders in assent, I shrugged mine, and Betty laughed, whereby we all, in our own way, agreed to the new arrangement, and preparations went forward rapidly.
By the time we were ready to start, the king, the duke, the duchess, and many ladies and gentlemen of the court circle had gone to Bath, thus giving us an opportunity to make our journey without the knowledge of any one in Whitehall; a consideration of vast importance to us under the circumstances. Some of our grand friends at court might have laughed at our taking the journey with an innkeeper's daughter, in an innkeeper's coach, but Frances and I laughed because we were happy.
There are distinct periods of good and bad luck in every man's life, which may be felt in advance by one sensitive to occult influences, if one will but keep good watch on one's intuitions and leave them untrammelled by will or reason. At this time "I felt it in my bones," as Betty would have said, that the day of our good luck was at hand.
All conditions seemed to combine to our pleasure when, on a certain bright spring morning, Betty, Frances, and I went down to the courtyard of the Old Swan, where we found the coach, the horses, and even the drivers all glittering in the sunshine.
There was ample room in the back seat of the coach for the three of us, so Betty took one corner, Frances made herself comfortable in another, and I took what was left, the pleasant place between them.
After Betty had kissed her father at least a dozen times, and had shed a few tears just to make her happiness complete, the driver cracked his whip and away we went, out through the courtyard gate, down Gracious Hill and across London Bridge before a sleepy man could have winked his eyes.
At first we thought we were in haste, but when we got out of Southwark and into the country, the dark green grass, the flowering hedges, the whispering leaves of the half-fledged trees, the violets by the roadside, and the smiling sun in the blue above, all invited us to linger. So we told the driver to slow his pace, and we lowered every window in the coach, there being no one in the country whose wonder and envy we cared to arouse by a display of our glass.
There was not room in Betty's little heart for all the great flood of happiness that had poured into it, so presently, to give it vent, she began to sing the little French lullaby we had so often heard, whereupon Frances and I ceased listening to the birds, and I was more thoroughly convinced than ever before that there were at least distinct periods of good fortune in every man's life.