"I am not to exceed two pounds a week, Anna?" Aunt Betha asked, as she put her head into the dining-room, where Mrs. Wilton and Louise were lingering over breakfast and complaining that Digby was so late.
"Oh, about the lodgings!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilton. "Are you going now, dear?" (Mrs. Wilton often called Aunt Betha "dear.") "I will go up to Guy, then."
"Susan is with him. He is better this morning. Good-bye,—I have no time to lose."
"Very well. Take a cab if you are very tired. Certainly not more than two pounds a week for the lodgings; but less will be better."
Aunt Betha closed the door, and was soon on her way, her quick, light footsteps growing faint and fainter as she went along the smooth pavement of Edinburgh Crescent. She had a message at the green-grocer's and an order at the butcher's to leave as she passed the shops which supplied the wants of Roxburgh; and then she turned away from what might be called the West End of Roxburgh to the neighbourhood of St. Luke's Church. Here there was a substratum of small villas and long, narrow streets, which were a long way from the crescents and terraces of the gay town to which so many people resorted for health and pleasure. The college at Roxburgh stood a little apart from crescents and small streets, and a large number of well-built houses clustered around it, where the families of boys who attended the college mostly lived. In days gone by there had been a mineral spa at Roxburgh, which had proved the starting-point of the large fashionable watering-place of these later times. But "the spa" had declined in popularity, and the old pump-room was in a forlorn state of decay and desolation. It had given Roxburgh its fame; and now, being out of repute, was cast aside and renounced.
The part of the town towards which Aunt Betha directed her efforts lay below the deserted spa, and was nearer the large, smoky town of Harstone, which was scarcely two miles from Roxburgh, where a busy life of trade and commerce went on in the valley, apart from the life of pleasure on the hill above. A cloud of smoke lay in the valley above Harstone, and the river fogs crept up on this side of Roxburgh, laden with the smut and breath of the chimneys, in late autumn and winter; but on this bright August morning, the towers and spires of the Harstone churches looked picturesque in the soft, gray mist which lay over them and the tall masts of the ships in the docks.
Aunt Betha did not, however, turn her eyes to the valley. She was too much intent on scanning the rows of small houses with "Apartments," "Furnished Apartments," printed on boards in the windows.
"Number 3 Lavender Place. That is a nice bow window, and white curtains. I'll try there." Aunt Betha rang the bell, and did not fail to notice "that you might see your face in the brass knob of the handle." A very neat woman came to the door, and in answer to her inquiries said—
"Yes, I have apartments to let,—a drawing-room and four bed-rooms."
Aunt Betha felt quite delighted at what seemed likely to be the speedy end of her labours. Everything was so neat. Drawing-room back and front. Could anything be better? Then came the question of terms.