She sighed. “Then I shall be obliged to walk.”
The waiter accepted this without interest, but just as she reached the door he bethought him of something, and said in a voice of unabated gloom: “The missus is going to Bristol in the trap.”
“Do you think she would take me with her?”
The waiter declined to offer an opinion, but he volunteered to go and ask the missus. However, Pen decided to go herself, and, penetrating to the yard at the back of the inn, found the landlord’s wife packing a basket into the trap, and preparing to mount into it herself.
She was surprised at Pen’s request, and eyed the cloak-bag with suspicion, but she was a stout, good-natured woman, and upon Pen’s assuring her mendaciously that Sir Richard was well-aware of her projected expedition, she allowed her to get into the trap, and to stow the cloak-bag under the seat. Her son, a phlegmatic young man, who chewed a straw throughout the journey, took the reins, and in a few minutes the whole party was proceeding up the village street at a sober but steady pace.
“Well, I only hopes, sir, as I’m not doing wrong,” said Mrs Hopkins, as soon as she had recovered from the exertion of hoisting her bulk into the trap. “I’m sure I was never one to pry into other folks’ business, but if you was running away from the gentleman which has you in charge, I should get into trouble, that’s what.”
“Oh no, indeed you won’t!” Pen assured her. “You see, we have not our own carriage with us, or—or I should not have been obliged to trouble you in this way.”
Mrs Hopkins said that she was not one to grudge trouble, and added that she was glad of company. When she discovered Pen had had no breakfast, she was very much shocked, and after much tugging and wheezing, pulled out the basket from under the seat, and produced out of it a large packet of sandwiches, a pie wrapped in a napkin, and a bottle of cold tea. Pen accepted a sandwich, but refused the pie, a circumstance which made Mrs Hopkins say that although the young gentleman would have been welcome to it, it was, in point of fact, a gift for her aunt, who lived in Bristol. She further disclosed that she was bound for the town to meet her sister’s second girl, who was coming down on the London stage to work as a chambermaid at the George. The ball of conversation having been set rolling in this easy fashion, the journey passed pleasantly enough, Mrs Hopkins furnishing Pen with so exhaustive an account of the various trials and vicissitudes which had befallen every member of her family, that by the time the trap drew up at an inn in the centre of Bristol, Pen felt that there could be little she did not know about the good lady’s relatives.
The stage was not due to arrive in Bristol until nine o’clock, at which hour the coach setting out for London would leave the inn. Mrs Hopkins set off to visit her aunt, and Pen, having booked a seat on the stage, and deposited the cloak-bag at the inn, sallied forth to lay out her last remaining coins on provisions to sustain her during the journey.
The streets were rather empty at such an early hour, and some of the shops had not yet taken down their shutters, but after walking for a few minutes and observing with interest the changes which, in five years, had taken place in the town, Pen found a cook-shop that was open. The smell of freshly baked pies made her feel hungry, and she went into the shop, and made a careful selection of the viands offered for sale.