“I’m so dreadfully afraid that I shall forget something or other,” she sighed, watching Mrs. Tregaskis drive away from the hall door. “I’ve not got her head for organization, you know. Ah well! it takes all sorts to make a world, as they say.”
It must be admitted that Miss Blandflower’s distrust of her own capability as a substitute was not unshared by Mrs. Tregaskis.
“Poor old Minnie! She always does her best,” Bertha said to her husband as he drove her to the station. “But I’m afraid there’ll be a big accumulation by the time I get back. However, it’s all in the day’s work, and the main point just now is to see what Frances is up to.”
Frederick remained silent, and she added hastily:
“Now, not another word till we get to the station. I’ve promised myself the luxury of this quiet half-hour to go over the blanket-club accounts.”
She pulled out of her bag a little red notebook and was immersed in figures until they reached the station.
Nor did Mrs. Tregaskis’ activities cease when she had established herself in the corner-seat of a third-class railway-carriage.
There was a woman seated opposite to her whose baby was fractious and crying, and only howled the louder at Bertha’s kind, broad smiles and dangled watch-chain. She gave the mother a few words of advice as to its feeding, and laughed away her stammered apologies at the baby’s ungracious reception of the lady’s kindness.
At the first stop a young girl whom Mrs. Tregaskis knew by sight as the daughter of a distant farmer, got into the carriage, her head muffled in a shawl, and immediately shut both windows with a timid, “Excuse me—I have the toothache.”
“No, no, no!” cried Bertha with jovial decision, and lowering the window furthest from the girl’s swollen face. “Sit over there, Nellie, and you won’t feel it. It is Nellie Jewell, isn’t it?”