“Oh, yes, please show me out,” cried Freda piteously, delighted at the thought of seeing her rough friend, whom she hoped to persuade to take her on to the Abbey.
“I will do so, ma’am,” answered Blewitt, who by this promise forced her to listen to him. “And if you could say a good word to the Captain for me that would induce him for to take a hard-working man into his service, why, I could tell him a many little tales about the goings on in this house which would astonish him, and just show him how he misplaced his confidence in some people I could name.”
“How can you think my father could listen to such things!” Freda broke out indignantly.
“Well, ma’am, gentlemen’s ways is not always straight ways, when they wants pertic’ler to know things,” said Blewitt, drily though respectfully. “But the Captain’s a ’asty and ’aughty sort of gentleman as you don’t always quite know where to have him! and when he gets this letter, which threatens to do for him if he don’t give up all dealings with Josiah Kemm immediate, why he’ll be in such a taking that he’ll be more likely to do for me than to listen to anything what I can say.”
“Why do you take the letter then?”
The fact was that Mr. Blewitt did not wish to be off with the old love until he was quite sure of being on with the new. He put this to Freda, however, in a nobler light.
“You see, ma’am,” said he, “so long as I take Mr. ’Eritage’s wages, I must carry out his horders.”
“Yes, of course, of course,” said Freda, with almost a shriek of delight as Blewitt opened a little side-door and she found herself out of the house, standing in the snow under the grey old outer wall.
She found Barnabas just driving off from one of a group of cottages at the bottom of the lane. At her cry he stopped, waiting for her to come up.
“Barnabas!” she cried, quivering with anxiety, “won’t you drive me over to the Abbey? Oh, do, do! You will, won’t you?”