“Edward here!” repeated Alice in surprised tones.
“Was when we came forth,” said Tabitha, who while she talked was busy unlading her basket. “Hope your lockers ’ll hold ’em. Time to close—good even! No room for chatter, Thomas Hall—say farewell, and march!”
And almost without allowing poor Thomas a moment to kiss his imprisoned sister, and beg her to “keep her heart up, and trust in the Lord,” Mistress Tabitha swept him out of the door in front of her, and with the big basket on her arm, lightened of its savoury contents, marched him off to the Chequers for the horse.
Chapter Twelve.
Pandora.
In the projecting oriel window of a very pleasant sitting-room, whose inside seat was furnished with blue velvet cushions, sat a girl of seventeen years, dressed in velvet of the colour then known as lion-tawny, which was probably a light yellowish-brown. It was trimmed, or as she would have said, turned up, with satin of the same colour, was cut square, but high, at the throat, and finished by gold embroidery there and on the cuffs. A hood of dark blue satin covered her head, and came down over the shoulders, set round the front with small pearls in a golden frame shaped somewhat like a horseshoe. She was leaning her head upon one hand, and looking out of the window with dreamy eyes that evidently saw but little of the landscape, and thinking so intently that she never perceived the approach of another girl, a year or two her senior, and similarly attired, but with a very different expression in her lively, mischievous eyes. The hands of the latter came down on the shoulders of the meditative maiden so suddenly that she started and almost screamed. Then, looking up, a faint smile parted her lips, and the intent look left her eyes.
“Oh! is it you, Gertrude?”
“Dreaming, as usual, Pan? Confess now, that you wist not I was in the chamber.”