"Ah, it would take some finding out," Mrs. Worfolk interposed. "I've never seen so many shapes and sizes of parcels in all my life."
"They must have made a mistake," said John. "I don't remember buying anything so tubular as this."
He pulled away some of the paper wrapping to see what was inside.
"Ah, of course! They're two or three boxes of Elvas plums I ordered. But please don't go, Miss Hamilton," he protested. "I am relying upon you to get the tickets to Waterloo."
In spite of a strenuous scene at the station, in the course of which John's attempts to propitiate Mrs. Worfolk led to one of the porters referring to her as his mother, they managed to catch the five o'clock train to Wrottesford. After earnestly assuring his secretary that he should be perfectly ready to begin work again on Joan of Arc the day after her arrival and begging her on no account to let herself be deterred from traveling on the morning of Boxing Day, John sank back into the pleasant dreams that haunt a warm first-class smoking compartment when it's raining hard outside in the darkness of a December night.
"We shall have a green Christmas this year," observed one of his fellow travelers.
"Very green," John assented with enthusiasm, only realizing as he spoke that the superlative must sound absurd to any one who was unaware of his thoughts and hiding his embarrassment in the Westminster Gazette, which in the circumstances was the best newspaper he could have chosen.
John was surprised and depressed when the train arrived at Wrottesford to find that the member of the Ambles party who had elected to meet him was Hilda; and there was a long argument on the platform who should drive in the dogcart and who should drive in the fly. John did not want to ride on the back seat of the dogcart, which he would have to do unless he drove himself, a prospect that did not attract him when he saw how impatiently the mare was dancing about through the extreme lateness of the train. Hilda objected to driving with his housekeeper in the fly, and in the end John was compelled to let Maud and Mrs. Worfolk occupy the dogcart, while he and Hilda toiled along the wet lanes in the fly. It was decided to leave the greater portion of the luggage to be fetched in the morning, but even so it was after eight o'clock before they got away from the station, and John, when he found himself immured with Hilda in the musty interior of the hired vehicle was inclined to prophesy a blue Christmas this year. To begin with, Hilda would try to explain the system she had pursued in allotting the various bedrooms to accommodate the large party that was expected at Ambles. It was bad enough so long as she confined herself to a verbal exposition, but when she produced a map of the house, evidently made by Hugh on an idle evening, and to illuminate her dispositions struck away most of John's matches, it became exasperating. His brain was already fatigued by the puzzle of fitting into two vehicles four pieces, one of which might not move to the square next two of the remaining pieces, and another of which could not move backward.
"I leave it entirely to you," he declared, introducing at last into the intellectual torment of chess some of the happy irresponsibleness of bridge. "You mustn't set me these chess problems in a jolting fly before dinner."
"Chess!" Hilda sniffed with a shiver. "Draughts would be a better name."