Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

She turned down her gown again, possibly lest she might encounter either of her masters on the way, and proceeded up the kitchen stairs. The broom lay on the chair where she had flung it, in Oswald's sitting-room. As she took it up she espied some crumbs under the table, and stooped down to brush them carefully into her hand, grumbling all the while.

"It's just like 'em! dropping their crumbs down like so many children! The trouble I'd used to have with that when old Bracknell was here! He'd shake his table-napkin on the carpet, he would; and Benn, he'd come away and never----"

"Is this the room? Is he here?"

To be interrupted by those words in a female voice close to her elbow brought Mrs. Benn to her legs at once. A lady in a gay white bonnet and violet-tipped feathers, with other attire on the same grand corresponding scale, stood confronting her. Mrs. Benn could only stare in the first moment from consternation. And the lady stared too, first at the room, then at Mrs. Benn, waiting for her question to be answered.

"Is who here?" cried Mrs. Benn.

"Mr. Oswald Cray. We were ushered up here by a young man whom we saw in the passage. He said this was Mr. Oswald Cray's room, and he would send him to us. Is he well?"

Mrs. Benn naturally looked round for some one to whom the "we" could apply, and saw a young lady at the door. A sweet-looking young lady whose manner was timid and hesitating, as if she did not like to advance further into the room. You need not be told that it was Sara Davenal. She had wished to remain in the fly while Mrs. Cray came up; but Mrs. Cray had insisted on being accompanied by her indoors, and Sara was obliged to yield, for she was unable to give any good reason against it. How could she hint at the relations which had once existed between her and Mr. Oswald Cray?--at the love that lingered still?

"He's as well as a body can be; leastways if his luncheon's anything to go by, which he have just eat," replied Mrs. Benn in answer to the question of the lady, whom she had not taken a fancy to, as she was permitting her tone to show. "Did you want him?"

"I have come to see him," was the answer. "He is my step-son, and we have not met for a good while."

Mrs. Benn's manner turned to a sudden thaw. In her crusty way she was fond of her master, Mr. Oswald Cray; and she thought she might as well be civil to the lady before her as his step-mother.