Anne Hereford: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

That Mrs. Hemson! that the ogre with claws my imagination had painted! In my astonishment I never spoke or stirred. The guard came up.

"This is Dashleigh," said he to me. "Are you come to receive this young lady, ma'am?"

Mrs. Hemson did receive me, with a warm embrace. She saw to my luggage, and then put me in a fly to proceed to her house. A thorough gentlewoman was she in all ways; a lady in appearance, mind, and manners. But it seemed to me a great puzzle how she could be so; or, being so that she could have married a retail tradesman.

Mr. Hemson was a silk-mercer and linendraper. It appeared to me a large, handsome shop, containing many shopmen and customers. The fly passed it and stopped at the private door. We went through a wide passage and up a handsome staircase, into large and well-furnished sitting-rooms. My impression had been that Mrs. Hemson lived in a hovel, or, at the best, in some little dark sitting-room behind a shop. Mrs. Jones, who kept the little shop where mamma used to buy her things, had only a kitchen behind. Upstairs again were the nursery and bedrooms, a very large house altogether. There were six children, two girls who went to school by day, two boys out at boarding-school, and two little ones in the nursery. In the yard behind were other rooms, occupied by the young men engaged in the business, with whom Mrs. Hemson appeared to have nothing whatever to do.

"This is where you will sleep, Anne," she said, opening the door of a chamber which had two beds in it. "Frances and Mary sleep here, but they can occupy the same bed while you stay. Make haste and get your things off, my dear, for the dinner is ready."

I soon went down. There was no one in the drawing-room then, and I was looking at some of the books on the centre table, when a gentleman entered: he was tall, bright, handsome; a far more gentlemanly man than any I had seen at Mr. Edwin Barley's, more so than even George Heneage. I wondered who he could be.

"My dear little girl, I am glad you have arrived in safety," he said, cordially taking my hand. "It was a long way for them to send you alone."

It was Mr. Hemson. How could they have prejudiced me against him? was the first thought that struck me. I had yet to learn that people in our Keppe-Carew class of life estimate tradespeople not by themselves but by their callings. The appearance of Mrs. Hemson had surprised me; how much more, then, did that of her husband! Mrs. Jones's husband was a little mean man, who carried out the parcels, and was given, people said, to cheat. Since Selina mentioned Mr. Hemson's trade to me, I had associated the two in my mind. Well educated, good and kind, respected in his native town, and making money fast by fair dealing, Mr. Hemson, to my ignorance, was a world's wonder.

"Is she not like Ursula, Frederick!" exclaimed Mrs. Hemson, holding up my chin. "You remember her?"

He looked at me with a smile. "I scarcely remember her. I don't think Ursula ever had eyes like these. They are worth a king's ransom; and they are honest and true."