Timothy held back the monogrammed door while Kate stepped in. Then he slid into the driver’s seat, leaving Bertha to follow him. So there was Kate bobbing around on the wide back seat that was richly though slipperily upholstered in smooth leather. Her baggage was in front with the servants. She had not even the cherished book to sustain her. She wondered, a little whimsically, that they had let her carry her purse.
Where was Elsie? Kate gave herself up to speculation as they crawled through the crowded city streets. They crawled, but it was smooth and beautiful crawling, for Timothy was an artist among chauffeurs. Kate looked all around her interestedly and happily in spite of the sharpness of her disappointment at Elsie’s absence. But although it was exciting and stimulating to her to be moving through the streets of the big city she realized the heat uncomfortably and, used to her high hill air, was over-conscious of the unsavoury odours that met her on every side. She unbuttoned and threw back her cape and resisted just in time an impulse to lift her hat from her head by the crown, the way a boy does, and toss it into a corner of the seat so that her head might be a little cooler. But another inclination she did not resist in time. She leaned forward and spoke to Bertha over the windshield: “Elsie, Miss Elsie, couldn’t she come? Is she well?” she asked.
What an idiotic question! Why was she always saying things so abruptly, things she hardly meant to say! Bertha turned her smooth, distinguished-looking profile. “She is very well. She will be at dinner.”
Now they were out of the city and they gained speed; but they gained almost without Kate’s noticing, for the car was so luxurious and Timothy was such an artist. But when she observed how the trees and fences and houses were beginning to rush by she braced her feet against the nickel footrail and laid her arm along the padded armrest. She leaned back, relaxed. She began to feel that she quite belonged in the car, as though such conveniences had always been at her service, almost as though private chauffeurs and ladies’ maids were an everyday matter. Or was she dramatizing herself? Anyway, it was fun and very, very new. She hoped there would be time to write her mother all about it to-night. She profoundly wished the Hart boys could see her!
But Bertha had turned her smooth profile again. “We are just entering Oakdale,” she informed her, speaking impersonally, so decorously that it might have been to the air. And instantly Kate’s composure and assurance were shivered, her relaxed muscles tensed themselves, her mind became just one big question mark.
Oakdale was a charming suburb. Most of the houses seemed to have lawns and gardens that justified the name of “grounds,” and wealth spoke on every side, but in a tone of good taste and often even beauty. Elms and maples lined the street down which the adventurer’s chariot was bowling.
Oh, which house, which house was Great Aunt Katherine’s? Would Elsie be standing in the doorway? Would Kate know the house by that? Or would she be at a window, or keeping a watch for them on some garden wall?
They suddenly swerved from the main residential street and rolled down a delightful lane bordered by older, more mellowed houses. At the very end of the lane, before a large white house with green blinds, the car came to a stop. What a gracious, dignified house it was, and every bit as imposing and mansionlike as Kate’s mother had described it. There were balconies gay with plants and hanging vines, tall windows, and an absence of anything ambiguous or superfluous. The wide front door, with its shining brass knocker and rows of potted plants at either side, was approached by a dozen or so wide, shallow stone stairs bordered by tall blue larkspur and a golden bell-shaped flower for which Kate did not know the name. The steps were almost upon the lane, but Kate knew that there were extensive “grounds” at the back, and somewhere there the little orchard house.
No Elsie stood at the top of those stone steps or came running around the house from the gardens at the sound of the stopping car. Not even Aunt Katherine made an appearance. Timothy held open the automobile door, Bertha took the suitcase and book, and Kate, with a “Thank you,” to Timothy, started off on the last stage of her journey, that of the climb of the stone steps to her aunt’s front door. Bertha followed close behind. Kate wondered whether she should ring the bell, or wait and let Bertha ring it for her. Or would Bertha open the door and they go in without ringing? Oh, dear! Why hadn’t she asked her mother more explicitly about correct usage when there is a lady’s maid at your heels? But then, perhaps Mother couldn’t have helped her much, for certainly Mother had never been so attended. And then the inner Kate asserted herself. “Don’t be a silly,” it said. “How can it matter which of you rings the doorbell?—and certainly you’re not going to go in without ringing. Bertha’s hands are too full either to ring the bell or open the door. Ring.”
But before her finger had time to reach the button, the door swung open before her as though by magic and Kate stepped in. A maid had opened the door and now stood half-concealed behind it with her face properly vacant. Kate, when she discovered her, gave her a nod and a faint “Thank you.” Then she stood still in the hall, looking about for her aunt. She had almost given up Elsie for the present; but surely her aunt would come now from some part of the house hurrying to greet her with hospitality and show her her room.