The driver felt that he had gossiped too much, and relapsed into silence, while Adah, in a paroxysm of terror sat with clasped hands and closed eyes, unmindful of Willie’s attempt to make her look at the huge building, just in sight. In her dread of Mrs. Richards she scarcely knew what she was doing, and leaning forward, at last she said, huskily, “Driver, driver, do you think she’ll turn me off too?”
“Turn you off!” and in his surprise at the sudden suspicion which for the first time darted across his mind, Jim brought his horses to a full stop, while he held a parley with the pale, frightened creature, asking so eagerly if Mrs. Richards would turn her off. “Why should she? You ain’t going there for that, be you?”
“Not to be turned out of doors, no,” Adah answered, “but I—I—I want that place so much. I read Miss Anna’s advertisement; but please turn back, or let me get out and walk. I can’t go there now. Is Miss Anna like the rest?”
Jim had recovered himself a little, and though he could not have been more astonished had Adah proved to be a washerwoman, than he was to find her a waiting-maid, it did not abate his respect for her one whit. She had been a lady sure, and as such he should treat her. She had also appealed to him for sympathy, and he would not withhold it.
“Miss Anna’s an angel,” he answered. “If you get her ear, you’re all right; the plague is to get it with them two she cats ready to tear your eyes out. If I’se you, I’d ask to see her. I wouldn’t tell my arrent either, till I did. She’s sick up stairs; but I’ll see if Pamely can’t manage it. That’s my woman—Pamely; been mine for four years, and we’ve had two pair of twins, all dead; so I feel tender towards the little ones,” and Jim glanced at Willie, who had succeeded in making Adah notice the house standing out so prominently against the winter sky, and looking to the poor girl more like a prison than a home.
Only one part of it seemed inviting—the two crimson-curtained windows opening upon a verandah, from which a flight of steps led down into what must be a flower-garden.
“Miss Anna’s room,” the driver said, pointing towards it; and Adah looked out, vainly hoping for a glimpse of the sweet face she had in her mind as Anna’s.
But Anna was sick in bed with a headache, induced by the excitement of her brother’s visit and the harsh words which passed between him and his sisters, he telling them, jokingly at first, that he was tired of getting married, and half resolved to give it up; while they, in return, abused him for fickleness, taunted him with their poverty, and sharply reproached him for his unwillingness to lighten their burden, by taking a rich wife when he could get one.
All this John had repeated to Anna in the dim twilight of the morning, as he stood by her bedside to bid her good-bye; and she, as usual, had soothed him into quiet, speaking kindly of his bride-elect, and saying she should like her.
He had not told her Lily’s story, as he meant to do. There was no necessity for that, for the matter was fixed. ’Lina should be his wife, and he need not trouble Anna further; so he had bidden her adieu, and was gone again, the carriage which bore him away bringing back Adah and her boy.