Mr. Jaggs rubbed his beard, scratched his head and thought he would like a pipe.
"Though bless you, miss, I don't want any present."
"You shall have the best pipe I can buy," said the girl. "It seems very inadequate."
"I'd rather have a briar, miss," said old Jaggs mistakenly.
He was on duty until the morning she left, and although she rose early he had gone. She was disappointed, for she had not given him the handsome case of pipes she had bought, and she wanted to thank him. She felt she had acted rather meanly towards him. She owed her life to him twice.
"Didn't you see him go?" she asked Mrs. Morgan.
"No, miss," the stout housekeeper shook her head. "I was up at six and he'd gone then, but he'd left his chair in the passage—I've got an idea that's where he slept, miss, if he slept at all."
"Poor old man," said the girl gently. "I haven't been very kind to him, have I? And I do owe him such a lot."
"Maybe he'll turn up again," said Mrs. Morgan hopefully. She had the mother feeling for the old, which is one of the beauties of her class, and she regretted Lydia's absence probably as much because it would entail the disappearance of old Jaggs as for the loss of her mistress. But old Jaggs did not turn up. Lydia hoped to see him at the station, hovering on the outskirts of the crowd in his furtive way, but she was disappointed.
She left by the eleven o'clock train, joining Mrs. Cole-Mortimer on the station. That lady had arranged to spend a day in Paris, and the girl was not sorry, after a somewhat bad crossing of the English Channel, that she had not to continue her journey through the night.