“You said I should do so!” he wailed in a tone imploringly earnest. “You said I should start with this morning’s dawn.”
“Yes, yes,” acquiesced Thomas. And he forthwith busied himself to advance the preparations.
The best hour that they could leave the station was a little before nine. No train, except one much earlier, stopped at it before. This gave time to get off comfortably: though Sir George, in his impatience, could with difficulty be induced to sit down to breakfast. My lady came in when they were at the table.
“This is really the most extraordinary proceeding!” she exclaimed, speaking chiefly to Thomas Godolphin. “Were such a thing related to me as taking place in another house I should decline to give credence to it. Are the hours of the day so few that you must choose the gloom of a winter’s morning for commencing a journey?”
Thomas glanced at Sir George, as if to draw her attention to him. “My father’s anxiety will not allow him to wait, Lady Godolphin. I think it well that we should catch the first train.”
“I wash my hands of the journey altogether,” said Lady Godolphin. “If Sir George does not reach the other end of it alive, you will have the goodness to remember that I am not to blame. Far better that he were safely kept in his room wrapped up in his dressing-gown in front of a good fire.”
“In that case, my lady, I would not answer for it that he reached the end of the day alive,” interposed Margery, who was in and out of the room busier than any of them. “Whether Sir George stays, or whether he goes, he’ll not last many days,” she added in a lower tone, so that it might not reach her master’s ear.
“If I must have gone, I would have started at a Christian hour, Sir George,” resumed his wife. “Getting us all out of bed as if we were so many milkmaids?”
Sir George looked round, timidity in his voice and manner. Did he fear that she would detain him even now? “You can come on afterwards, you know, Lady Godolphin; we need not hurry you. Oh, I must, I must be at Ashlydyat!”
Thomas Godolphin came to the rescue. “We shall be in the carriage in five minutes, my dear father, if you will only take your breakfast.”