“Why, who should it be but Mrs. Millar?—never looked properly at the note, and gave the boy a pound’s worth of silver. When he showed her that it was a five, she took it up between her hands, and with her cursed solemn face said, ‘Oh, I can’t change that note.’ The boy carried home the story; the people in the shop looked at one another; and the stupid woman went on serving her buns, actually the only person that did not find out what a commotion she had begun. The bun-eaters all made a circuit by our bank in their walk, and one of them came in and gave us warning; but it was too late. In half an hour, the place was besieged, and to avoid being observed, I had to make my way out through Taylor’s garden at the back.”
“Poor Mrs. Millar!” said Melea “I am as sorry for her as for anybody.”
“O, you never saw any one in such a taking—as she deserves to be. She came, without her bonnet, into the middle of the crowd, explaining and protesting, and all that; with not a soul to mind what she said now, though they were ready enough to snap up her words an hour before. She caught a glimpse of me, when she had made her way up the steps, and she actually went down on her knees to ask me to forgive her; but I swore I never would.”
“O father!” cried Melea, more troubled than she had yet been. At the moment, she received a signal to look as usual while the Broadhursts’ carriage passed, but on no account to stop to speak. Whether her father, with his twitching countenance, could look as usual, was Melea’s doubt. Doubting it himself, he teazed his horse, and made it bolt past the carriage on one side, while his daughter saluted the Broadhursts on the other.
“Well carried off, child!” he cried.
“Take care, Sir. They are looking after us.”
“Aye; pronouncing me a wonderful horseman for my years, I dare say; but I must put that matter to the proof a little more before I get quietly seated in the mail.—Well; I may be off now, I think; and here we part. God bless you, my dear! Thank God we have not met Cavendish or any of his tribe! I should have rode over the children, depend upon it. Fare well, my love!”
“Not yet,” said Melea, settling herself as if for a feat. “I can gallop as well as you, and I must see you into the mail,—for my mother’s sake.”
“You will soon have had enough; and when you have, turn without speaking to me. George, follow your mistress, and never mind me, or where I take it into my head to go. Now for it!”
The gallop lasted till George wondered whether master and young mistress were not both out of their right minds. At length, the mail was seen steadily clearing a long reach of hill before them. George was shouted to to ride on and stop it; a service which he could scarcely guess how he was to perform, as it had been all he could do to keep up with his charge for the last four miles. The mail disappeared over the ridge before the panting horses had toiled half way up the long hill; but it was recovered at the top, and at last overtaken, and found to have just one place vacant inside. Mr. Berkeley made time for another word.