“Upon my word, Miss Hazlehurst,” began the sour friend, addressing the acidulated aunt, “this is very provoking, ma’am; it’s six o’clock, and it’s growing cold, and it will be quite dusk before we get home; and I really believe Miss Cornetoe was right this morning, and that we shall have a wet night after all.”
“Shall I run down to the inn and see what causes the delay? I must go there to get my horse,” inquired Coverdale, good naturedly.
“If you would be so kind, we really should be extremely obliged to you,” returned Miss Hazlehurst senior, with her most gracious and least hippopotamic smile; and thus urged, Coverdale hurried off.
In the meantime poor Alice, who by no means admired the position of affairs, and had moreover been considerably alarmed in the morning by Mr. Crane’s unskilful driving, whispered a pathetic appeal to her aunt to be allowed to accompany the brougham party,—“she could sit on the box, Wilson, the coachman, was so inconceivably respectable, and she was almost sure it would not rain;”—but her aunt was a strong-minded woman, and a warm advocate of the Crane alliance, and she would not hear of such a change of plan. As soon as Coverdale arrived within sight of the inn, he perceived the missing phaeton standing in front of the doorway, the horses ready harnessed, and the groom seated on the driving-seat; accordingly he made signs to him to come on, of which, for some unaccountable reason, the man took not the slightest notice. Surprised at this, Harry made the best of his way to the spot, and on reaching it discovered, from the swollen, heated look of the fellow’s features, and the stupid, obstinate expression which characterized them, that he had been drinking to excess.
“Why the man is intoxicated!” exclaimed Coverdale, turning to the ostler, who, with one or two hulking village lads, stood staring at the coachman with a grin of amusement on their vacant faces; “why did not you make him get down, and bring the carriage yourself?”
“A did troy, but a woldn’t budge a inch—a be properly drunk to be zure!”
“Oh, he would not, eh?” inquired Coverdale; then, turning to the groom, he continued, “Get down directly, my friend, I want particularly to speak to you.”
To this the groom contrived to stammer out on insolent refusal, accompanied by a recommendation to Coverdale to mind his own business, and give orders to his own servants.
“My business just at present is to make you get down from that phaeton,” returned Harry, his eyes flashing.
“Oh! it is, is it?—I should like to see you do it, that’s all!” rejoined the other, with a gesture of drunken defiance.