Not until that moment did Mrs. Bolland remember that her guest was a reputed teetotaller. So, then, Mrs. Atkinson, proprietress of the “Black Lion,” was mistaken.
“That ye may, an’ welcome,” she said in her hearty way.
Angèle murmured something in French, but her mother gave a curt answer, and the child subsided, being, perhaps, interested by the evident amazement and admiration she evoked among the country people. To-day, Angèle was dressed in a painted muslin, with hat and sash of the same material, long black silk stockings, and patent-leather shoes. She looked elegantly old-fashioned, and might have walked bodily out of one of Caran d’Ache’s sketches of French society.
Suddenly she bounced up like an india-rubber ball.
“Tra la!” she cried. “V’là mon cher Martin!”
The prayer meeting had ended, and Martin was speeding home, well knowing who had arrived there.
Angèle ran to meet him.
“She’s a rale fairy,” whispered Mrs. Summersgill, mistress of the Dale End Farm. “She’s rigged out like a pet doll.”
“Ay,” agreed her neighbor. “D’ye ken wheer they coom frae?”
“Frae Lunnon, I reckon. They’re staying wi’ t’ Miss Walkers. That’s t’ muther, a Mrs. Saumarez, they call her, but they say she’s a Jarman baroness.”