The coachman concluded that his mistress was going to spend a quarter of an hour with the two old ladies, while he went on and waited for his master at the station, and that he was to call for her on his return. He did not even ask for her orders upon this point, taking them for granted.
He was ten minutes too soon at the station, as every well-conducted coachman ought to be.
“I’m to call for my mistress, sir,” he said, as Mr. Greswold stepped into the brougham.
“Where?”
“At Ivy Cottage, sir: Miss Fisher’s.”
“Very good.”
The brougham pulled up at Ivy Cottage; and the groom got down and knocked a resounding peal upon the Queen Anne knocker, it being hardly possible nowadays to find a knocker that is not after the style of Queen Anne, or a newly-built twenty-five pound a year cottage in any part of rural England that does not offer a faint reminiscence of Bedford Park.
The groom made his inquiry of the startled little maid-of-all-work, fourteen years old last birthday, and already aspiring to better herself as a vegetable-maid in a nobleman’s family.
Mrs. Greswold had not been at Ivy Cottage that evening.
George Greswold was out of the brougham by this time, hearing the girl’s answer.