The next thing that Miss Burden was aware of was that the old lady was fast asleep.
When Mr. Marchbanks came a few minutes later to announce that luncheon was ready, his mistress, with the blue-backed volume in her lap, was snoring lustily. An anxious consultation followed. Her ladyship had not missed her luncheon for seventy-three years.
The far-seeing wisdom of Miss Burden—doubtless due in some measure to her pure taste in English fiction—was allowed to prevail. The state of the old woman’s temper could not possibly be worse than it had been that morning if the sun was to remain faithful to the firmament. If she slept undisturbed it might conceivably be better.
Miss Burden was justified of her wisdom. The old lady missed her luncheon for the first time in seventy-three years. Ideas come to us fasting; and that is the only explanation there is to offer of how her Idea came to be born.
CHAPTER II
THE IDEA WHICH CAME TO HER
IT was a quarter to three when the old woman awoke. She was alone save for Ponto, her fidus Achates, who was snoring in front of the fire with his tail curled up in the most ridiculous manner. And yet she was not alone, for there is reason to believe that her Idea was already born in her. There can be little doubt that the Idea had sprung into being, even before she had time to turn, which she did almost immediately, to the half-pint of claret and the plate of goose liver pie that Miss Burden and Mr. Marchbanks in consultation had caused to be laid beside her.
Now do not suppose that the Idea was proclaimed forthwith in its meridian splendor. Nothing of the kind. It was still in its infancy. It had to be shaped and reshaped, to be dandled and cosseted, to be born and born again in the dim recesses of the mind, before it gathered the requisite force to issue as it were from the armory of Minerva.
At four o’clock precisely it was the custom of this old lady, if the light and the British climate permitted, to drive the whole length of Bond Street and once round Hyde Park.
At that hour the sky having cleared sufficiently for the sun to make a tardy and shamefaced appearance, the old lady, accompanied by her faithful gentlewoman and her somnolent four-footed beast, entered the equipage that was drawn up before her door.
It was an extraordinary vehicle. It had yellow wheels and a curious round body, which, according to scale, was very nearly as fat as Ponto’s. It was perched up on very high springs, and was in the forefront of the fashion about the year 1841.