Since Blake would not be on the premises that night, Rosamond asked herself whether she ought not to go to Mrs. Lee’s and engage Bella Greenup to stay the night at Villa Rose. She had never spent a night alone in the large house and questioned whether she cared to do so. In the end she dismissed the idea of a companion; for, as she reminded herself, the community had never had a burglar or even a burglar scare, and, while an occasional tramp might stray to the Trenton road, none had been known to climb the hill into the sacred precincts of Roseborough.
Like the toll-man, she was unaware that nearly an hour had slipped by in the combined delay of the Judge’s call and Florence’s manœuvres. Still under the impression that the afternoon was hers to spend by the river, she went into the house for more hair pins to catch up the curls, shaken loose by laughter and the mignonette’s fingers. She satisfied herself that the Orleans mirror reflected a vision both fair and neat enough to entrance Love at sight, if he should come riding by where the rushes divided and made a peephole to the slough. Then she ran downstairs again, but her gay song ceased in the shock of hearing four o’clock ring out—a shock by no means modified when she asked the kitchen clock for denial and saw the long hand at eleven minutes past the hour.
“Four o’clock! If Amanda were here she would be bringing me tea to the summer-house. It seems very late to go to the river; because, of course, I must have my supper at five-thirty as usual. Oh, dear! I ought to have it at five to-night; because they will all be here by seven, and I shall take so much longer than His Friggets would to get my own supper and wash up, and then set out all the things for them on the dining-room table.... And, of course, if I don’t have my tea now, I shall be hungry before five-thirty. Oh, dear! It would seem that His Friggets have their uses in my life, after all.”
Another wave of indignation swept over her, to cool in despair, as she realized how her Wonderful Day had vanished, hour by hour, leaving her only the distressful discovery that colours were not going to free her. From now on she would risk a proposal from some tiresome man every time she stepped abroad, alone. As for the women...! she trembled to think of the gossip that might gush forth as soon as they saw her. Tittle-tattle and unwelcome proposals! Were these to be her lot until, in desperation, she allowed herself to be persuaded by one or other of Roseborough’s gentlemen? Angry, helpless tears filled her eyes.
“If I were smothered in crape I could go anywhere alone, and do whatever I wanted to, without stupid, silly men intruding. I didn’t know when I was well off,” she whimpered. “I’ve never once got outside the gates of Villa Rose all this day!”
Barely one hour left! What should she do with it?
The question as to this hour, as with all the previous hours, was settled for her by Roseborough. A sound of wheels on the road ceased at her carriage-gate. In a trice, she saw the gate unlatched and borne inward by a short, stout woman in a white mull dress, and a white hat covered with a green mosquito-netting veil, which served to keep the dust from her broad, pink countenance. She wore also a very wide tartan sash with a large bunchy bow at the back, the worse for being much and heavily sat upon.
“Whatever on earth are The Kilties coming here for?” Rosamond asked herself with another rush of anger. “Isn’t this just too awful?” She stamped her foot in vexation.
She did not need to see the cart come through to know that all three of the Misses MacMillan were about to honour her with a visit. Wherever one MacMillan went, all MacMillans went. While Miss Elspeth held the gate open, a broken-kneed gray nag wobbled into the grounds, drawing a loose-wheeled, scratched cart, with one seat that could comfortably hold two, but always squeaked protestingly under three. Two more short, stubby, green-netted, white-frocked maids crowned the cart; both, like their eldest sister, displayed the MacMillan plaid.
To Rosamond’s dismay, their cart was followed by a four-wheeler laden with furbelows. The spinsters of Roseborough always wore white fluffy frocks with bright ribbon sashes, in the summer, because they were “so young-looking” (the frocks, not the spinsters). The four-wheeler held two seats, one stool, and seven girls. Only two could sit on each narrow seat; but there was a stool wedged in between the seats and one sat on that, holding the sixth girl on her lap. The seventh stood partly on her own and partly on the fifth girl’s feet, and held on with all her might to the back of the front seat to keep from toppling into the road. When the vehicle stopped and they all tried to get out, the whole looked more like a wrecked ice-cream cart than anything else, with the white flounces spilling and tumbling over the edge in every direction. These were the Misses Pelham-Hew.