“Ain’t you Miss Annie Brooke of Rashleigh Rectory?”
This remark so took Annie by surprise and so completely upset her already tottering nerves that she gave a sudden cry and said in a sort of smothered voice:
“Oh, please, please don’t betray me!”
The girl now nodded to her companion, and the girl who was seated close to Annie said in a low, soothing tone:
“We ain’t goin’ to tell on yer, miss. If yer want to go up to town unbeknown to them as has the charge o’ yer, ’tain’t no affair o’ ours. I’m Tilda Freeman, and that ’ere girl is Martha Jones. I am a Lunnon gel, and Lunnon bred, and I was down on a wisit to my friend Martha Jones. She’s comin’ up with me for a bit to see the big town. Be you acquainted with Lunnon, miss, and do you know its ways?”
“No, I don’t know London very well,” said Annie. She had recovered some of her self-possession by this time. “You are mistaken in supposing,” she continued, trying to speak in as cheerful a tone as she could, “that I am—am going away privately from my friends. I have lost my dear uncle, and am obliged to go to London on business.”
“Yes, miss,” said Martha Jones, “and you has peeled off yer mournin’. You was in black when we seed you at the funeral. And why has yer come up by the night train, and why has yer taken a third-class ticket? And why do you ask us not to betray you? Don’t you tell no lies, miss, and you’ll be told no stories. You’re runnin’ away, and there’s no sayin’ but that it ’ave somethin’ to do with Dawson the butcher.”
“Dawson?” said Annie, her heart beginning to beat very hard.
“Dawson’s in a rare way about a cheque which ’e cashed for yer, miss. ’E can’t get ’is money back. Now Mrs Dawson is own sister to my mother, and we know all about it. There, miss, Tilda and me, we don’t want to be ’ard on a young lady like you, and if you ’ud confide in us, you ’ud find us your good friends. There ain’t no manner o’ use, miss, in your doin’ anythin’ else, for we can soon send a bit o’ a letter to Aunt Jane Dawson, and then the fat’s in the fire.”
“Oh, oh!” said Annie, “I—” She roused herself; she pushed back her hat; she pressed her hot hand to her hot cheek. “Do you think we might open a little bit of the window?” she said.