“You won’t try to starve the blessed hinfant,” she said, “and rob a pore woman of ’er ’ard earned money?”
Prudence earnestly assured her she would not, that nothing was farther from her intentions. She apologised again and again about the unlucky cheque, and implored her unexpected visitor to be calm, to be patient for one moment while she ran upstairs to fetch her cheque book.
Mrs. Brown, however, followed her to the door, and protested huskily against the younger Miss Semaphore’s “giving” her “the slip.”
As poor Prudence escaped, she had the misery of seeing the heads of Mrs. Whitley, the medical woman, and even of the stately Mrs. Dumaresq herself, hastily withdrawn from over the balustrade on the first landing. Every minute seemed an hour until a fresh cheque was made out, and good Mrs. Brown, grasping it tightly in one hand, had gone off to negociate it after a deal of explanation. Prudence felt quite sick with agitation and apprehension.
“I really almost believe,” she said to herself, “I really am inclined to think that Mrs. Brown must have been drinking.”
A dreadful uneasiness as to how Augusta might be faring weighed heavy on her heart.
“I will certainly go to-morrow and see the place,” she resolved, “and if I do not like it, I’ll take Augusta away.”
Her spirits drooped at the prospect of an impending conflict with good Mrs. Brown, for even if her thoughts wronged the respectable woman, that afternoon’s experience showed that the lady in question had another side to her character besides that observed by Prudence at London Bridge Station.
CHAPTER XV.
PRUDENCE CALLS AT PLUMMER’S COTTAGES.
Next morning Prudence, after a restless night, was up betimes. Never in the past had the placid, good-natured spinster known sleeplessness, except in a very modified form. Since Augusta’s misfortune, however, that was changed. She thought more than she ever had thought in her life, and constant anxiety was making her face look drawn and worn. Her brief triumph at having got her sister safely out of the house had vanished with the unexpected and unwelcome visit of “good Mrs. Brown.”