As they turned and started at a jog trot northward, she remembered her sister and her new-found aunt.
"Hold—hold, Gregory!" she cried. "What of Rebecca? What of my aunt—my gowns?"
"I am to send an ostler from the Peacock for your nurse and clothing, mistress," said Gregory. "My orders was not to wait for aught, but bring you back instant quickly wheresoever I found you." After a pause he went on with a grin: "I doubt I came late, hows'ever. Sir Guy hath had his say, I'm thinkin'!" and he chuckled audibly.
"Now you mind your own business, Gregory!" said Phœbe, sharply.
His face fell, and during the rest of their ride he maintained a rigid silence.
The next morning found Phœbe sitting in her room in the Peacock Inn, silently meditating in an effort to establish order in the chaos of her mind. Her hands lay passively in her lap, and between her fingers was an open sheet of paper whose crisp folds showed it to be a letter.
Daily contact with the people, customs, dress, and tongue of Elizabethan England was fast giving to her memories of the nineteenth century the dim seeming of a dream. As she came successively into contact with each new-old acquaintance, he took his place in her heart and mind full grown—completely equipped with all the associations, loves, and antipathies of long familiarity.
Gregory had brought her to the inn the night before, and here she had received the boisterous welcome of old Isaac Burton and the cooler greeting of his dame, her step-mother. They took their places in her heart, and she was not surprised to find it by no means a high one. The old lady was overbearing and far from loving toward Mistress Mary, as Phœbe began to call herself. As for Isaac Burton, he seemed quite subject to his wife's will, and Phœbe found herself greatly estranged from him.
That first afternoon, however, had transported her into a paradise the joys of which even Dame Burton could not spoil.