“Tell the young man as sent this that the madam says how she’s very much obleeged to him for the hot stuff, which it has gone right to the right place, and done her good and no mistake.”
The next moment the three gentlemen passengers took their places inside the coach, two of them sitting on the front seat in opposite corners, and one of them, Dick, sitting on the middle seat beside mammy.
The coach started again. The night was so dark, and the down-hill road so steep, that its progress was cautiously slow.
The male passengers wrapped themselves closely in their “mauds,” pulled their caps down over their eyes, and composed themselves to sleep.
Mammy opened her luncheon basket, and, having first hospitably offered to share its contents with each and all of her fellow-passengers and been politely refused, set to work and ate a very hearty supplementary supper off the best it contained of food and drink, and then gathered up the fragments and put them away.
Finally, she took off her best bonnet—of the Quaker or Methodist pattern,—hung it up beside her mistress’s, tied a little woollen shawl over her head, wrapped a big one around her shoulders, and resigned herself to rest.
Soon all were sleeping except Drusilla, who, physically speaking, was more favorably placed for sleep than any of the others. She lay very comfortably, really rocked, not racked, by the swinging motion of the coach as it rolled down hill. She was very tired, and so, in a bodily sense, she almost enjoyed this soft reposing and easy rocking; but she was not sleepy, for her mind was too active with the thoughts of what lay around and before her.
Where was Dick Hammond and Mr. Hopper going? Who was the tall, dark gentleman they had taken up at Washington, and who certainly seemed to be of the same party, since she had seen him signalling to Mr. Hopper? Was their errand in the country connected with the same sad business that was taking herself thither?
Dick might be only going down in answer to his uncle’s invitation to the wedding, she reflected. “But, no, not so!” she thought, instantly repudiating the idea that Richard Hammond, after all that he had said in reprobation of the iniquitous marriage, could possibly sanction it by his presence.
But what then was he going for? and why was he taking Mr. Hopper and that other gentleman—who looked as if he were in some way connected with the law, along with him?