“Is she—you understand those sort of things, Mrs Hogg—is she, in your opinion, a young lady?”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” was Mrs Hogg’s rejoinder, “and to my way o’ thinking—to be frank with you—Miss, she ain’t.”
This was rather a damper to Angela’s hopes, but after a minute she reflected that probably Nesta was a rough specimen of the genus Lady, and that at any rate it was her duty to follow up this clue to the end.
“I should like to see her,” she said. “Where is she now?”
“Oh, Miss, if I thought, even for a single moment, that she was a friend of yourn, I’d treat her very different; but all she did was to stand in the middle of my kitchen on Saturday—”
“On Saturday?” said Angela.
“Yes; Miss, on Saturday, and she says as bold as brass—‘Mary Hogg sent me.’ That was her; but if I’d known—”
“Where is she now?” said Angela:
“I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in all flustered and angry, forsooth, because poor old Mrs Johnston hadn’t been given a stroke of blindness—that seemed to put her out more than anything else. She must have a most malicious mind—that is, according to my way of thinking. Well, anyhow, Miss, I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in, and I told her to take it out and eat it. I don’t know from Adam where she is now.”
“She would go, perhaps, into the country?”