She turned quickly, and saw a man rather under than over the middle height, of spare figure, and hard-featured face, who was standing by the book-stall, turning over the leaves of a Christmas number. He wore a long frieze overcoat, which enveloped him from his chin to his heels, and a little cap to match, which hid his eyes.
Little as she could see of him, Chris instantly jumped to the conclusion that this was Mr. Bradfield himself.
“He wouldn’t order me about like that if he were not,” she said to herself. And she felt rather frightened, wondering how her mother would receive this style of address, and picturing to herself the “awful row” there would be between the two at or very soon after their very first interview.
She said “Thank you,” rather timidly, and took the suggestion offered, rather to prevent further conversation than because she wished to rest. When her mother had finished with the luggage, Chris ran towards her, to check any verbal indiscretion of the kind she had been indulging in on the way down, concerning the supposed unpleasant idiosyncrasies of the master of Wyngham House.
But she was too late.
“Very bucolic domestics this gentleman seems to have. Let us hope we shall not see their characteristics repeated in the master,” said Mrs. Abercarne, in a voice loud enough for the man at the bookstall to hear, as she and her daughter met.
The man in the frieze overcoat turned round, and regarded the speaker with an amused stare, which that lady chose to consider very offensive. She turned her back upon him sharply, therefore, as she went on speaking to Chris, who looked frightened. The man in the frieze coat walked away.
“What extremely bad manners these rustics have!” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, before he was well out of hearing.
“Sh-sh, mamma! We don’t know who he is,” said Chris, in a terror-struck whisper.
Mrs. Abercarne was going to retort rather sharply, when a thought, a suspicion, perhaps the same that had alarmed her daughter, made her pause, and turn abruptly to the porter who was standing behind her.