“I’m sorry, but I’m not!”
At this, Dear dropped the soap with a sudden splosh into the water and looked round in frozen astonishment. (The merest wraith of it remained two hours later when Abigail emptied the water. It was a new cake, too!)
At the name of Flabbers, light came. Miss Flabbers is a gentlewoman in somewhat reduced circumstances, who lives in a cottage a good mile and a half away. Presumably she was going to add to her income by taking in boarders.
“If it’s Miss Flabbers whom you are wanting,” I continued, filling up a painful silence, “her house is called Rose May Cottage. I expect you got the names confused in your mind.”
“There! It’s all your fault,” said the ample one, turning irritably to her companion; “you said it was Rose May Cottage when you read the first letter: but I said that was an absurd name, and it must be Rosemary it was intended for—country people do write so badly. I do wish, dear, you would be careful to be more accurate; if only you had said the right name I might have been saved all this trouble—and expense, because of course I shall insist on paying for our tea——” (she didn’t though!) “and think how many miles I’ve walked, and now I suppose I’ve to do it all again. How I wish I’d listened to that old man at the station and gone with——”
She paused suddenly and threw up her hands; and then there arose that cry common to all womankind the world over, when they are weary with their pilgrimage, footsore and travel-stained; the cry that must have rent the air in the olden days when Sarai trailed after Abram across the plains of Mamre, even as it sounds to-day from Yokohama to Land’s End:
“Where’s our luggage?”
There was a perceptible gasp—and then, “Yes; where’s our luggage?” faintly echoed Dear, as she nervously clutched her gloves with feverish haste and pinned them on her head, and then wildly tried to get her arms into her hat.
“I expect it’s reposing peacefully in Miss Flabbers’ best bedroom,” I said assuringly. “At any rate it isn’t here!” as I saw signs that they were going to crawl under the bed in search of it. “The man would be sure to deliver it there, and——”
Abigail knocked at the door and asked if she could speak to me for a minute.