“Can I speak to Mrs Mullion?” said Geoffrey, unable to repress a smile at the girl’s vanity and confusion.
“Oh! yes. Please will you step in?”
“Who’s that, Madge?” cried a voice from somewhere at the back. “If it’s Aunt Borlase, we don’t want any fish to-day, and tell her—”
“Hush, mamma!” exclaimed the girl, turning sharply, but without checking the voice, whose owner—a very round, pleasant-looking little matron—came forward, with a piece of black silk in one hand, a sponge in the other, and bringing with her a peculiar smell of hot irons lately applied to the material she held.
“Well, my dear,” she said, volubly, “how was I to know that it was company? Oh! good-morning, sir.”
“Good-morning,” said Geoffrey, who was pleasantly impressed by the mother and daughter, who now led the way into a comfortable old-fashioned parlour, whose window looked direct upon the foam-fringed promontory on which stood the ruined mine. “A Mr Paul, whom I have just left, advised me to see you about your apartments.”
“Oh! yes,” said the elder lady, smoothing herself down in front, as if trying to free herself from a little exuberance—the younger lady having now got rid of brush, book, and apron, and given a furtive touch to her pretty hair. “You are Mr Lee, our new clergyman,” she continued volubly, “and—”
“Indeed I am not!” said Geoffrey, laughing, and glancing at the younger lady, who blushed, and gave her head a conscious toss.
“But I sent word to the hotel that I should be glad to take him in,” said the elder lady; “and now that’s just the way with that Aunt Borlase. Madge, dear, they never got the message.”
“Is this one of the rooms?” said Geoffrey, to stem the flood of eloquence.