“But not motherless?” said Stasy, nestling in closer, “as you were, you poor, dear, little thing. And you hadn’t even a brother or sister! Except for marrying papa, you would have been very lonely. But I wish you’d look out of the window now, mamma, and see if you remember the places. We must be getting very near Blissmore.”
The train was an express one, which in itself had surprised Mrs Derwent a little: express trains used not to stop at Blissmore. They whizzed past some roadside stations, of which, with some difficulty the girls made out the names, in one or two instances familiar to their mother. Then signs of a more important stopping-place began to appear; rows of small, “run-up” cottages, such as one often sees on the outskirts of a town that is beginning to “grow;” here and there a tall chimney, suggestive of a brewery or steam-laundry, were to be seen, on which Mrs Derwent gazed with bewildered eyes.
“This surely cannot be Blissmore,” she exclaimed, as the train slackened. “I have not recognised the neighbourhood at all. It must be some larger town that I had forgotten, or else the railway comes along a different route now.”
But Blissmore it was. Another moment or two left no room for doubt; and, feeling indeed like a stranger in a strange land, Mrs Derwent stepped on to the platform of what was now a fairly important railway station.
“A fly, ma’am—want a fly?” said several voices, as the three made their way to the outside, where several vehicles were standing, and some amount of bustle going on.
Mrs Derwent looked irresolutely at her daughters. “I had thought of walking to the house-agents’,” she said; “but now I doubt if I should find the way. It all seems so utterly changed.”
“We should need a carriage in any case to get to the place we have come to see,” said Blanche. “It is a mile or more from the station, they said.”
“Pinnerton Lodge,” said Mrs Derwent to the foremost of the flymen; “do you know where that is?”
“Pinnerton Lodge,” repeated the man. Then, his memory refreshed by some of the standers-by, he exclaimed: “Oh, to be sure—out Pinnerton Green way. There’s two or three houses out there.”
“Then I shall want you to drive us there; but go first to Enneslie Street—Messrs Otterson and Bewley, the house-agents,” said Mrs Derwent, as she got into the fly, followed by her daughters.