“My patience! what are you all doing here? So, Agatha—Anne! How d'ye do, my worthy brother? Why didn't you all come to our house?”
“We were coming directly,” Agatha said. “But how did you find out we were at Kingcombe?”
“You little London-lady! As if anybody, especially the much-beloved Anne Valery (saving her presence) and the much-wondered-at Mr. and Mrs. Locke Harper, could drive through Kingcombe without the fact being speedily circulated throughout the whole town? Why, my dear, if you must know, the grocer told Mrs. Edwards' nursemaid, and Mrs. Edwards' nursemaid told it to Mrs. Jones at the Library, and Mrs. Jones told Miss Trenchard, who was coming to call on me; so I asked Duke to give the children their dinner, and off I started, tracking you as cleverly as one of Nathanael's Red Indians. And here I am.”
She stopped, breathless, her flounces, veil, and shawl flying abroad in all directions. But she looked so hearty, natural, and good-humoured, that her entrance was quite a relief to Agatha—more especially as, for a great wonder, she asked no questions.
“So, I hear you have been showing Honeywood to Mrs. Harper. Pretty place, isn't it! A pity it's not on your property, Anne, or you would not let it go to ruin unlet. And here is poor Mr. Wilson's old house, with all the furniture just as it was. How melancholy!”
She said “How melancholy!” just in the tone that she would have said “How entertaining!” From circumstances, or from natural peculiarity—that light easy temper which dances like a feather over the troubled waters of life—she had evidently never learnt the meaning of the word sorrow.
“But now,” Harriet continued, “what I come for, is to carry you all off to lunch—the children's dinner. My dear, you must see my boys, your nephews.”
Agatha stood aghast at the idea of having nephews!
“And such boys!” Miss Valery added, interposing. “'The Missus' has good right to be proud of them. If there is one thing in which Harrie succeeds better than another, it is in the management of her children.”
“Bah! they manage themselves; I just leave them to nature,” cried Mrs. Dugdale; but her eye—the mother's eye—twinkled with pleasure all the time, which greatly improved its expression, Agatha thought. She walked off gaily with her sister-in-law, Nathanael following. Anne stayed behind, conversing with the old woman who showed the house. She and Mr. Harper had pointedly avoided any private speech with one another.