An old woman opened the door, and the three girls were speedily absorbed into a dark vestibule, a single candle glimmering in the distance.
“Are we very late, Nancy?” asked Eve.
“Not later than I thowt you’d be,” answered the woman, with a north-country accent; and then there was nothing for Vansittart to do except to wish the three sisters good night, and go back to the ’bus, where Sir Hubert was beginning to be uneasy about his horses waiting in the frosty air.
“Cuts into them like knives,” said Sir Hubert, as his brother-in-law clambered on to the box. “You might have made shorter work of seeing Miss Marchant to her door.”
“I might have let her fall on that inclined plane,” growled Vansittart. “Capital for tobogganing, but very dangerous for a young lady in satin shoes.”
“Poor girl, I wonder where her next satin shoes will come from,” said Hubert.
“Is the Colonel so very hard up?”
“Very, I should think, since he is always in debt to the little tradespeople about here.”
“And on the strength of that you all talk about those three girls as if they were lepers,” retorted Vansittart. “I have no patience with the pettiness of village society.”