“What a noise!” she said.
It was not too quickly responded to, nevertheless, and when a footman at last made his appearance, he raised his eyebrows with an expression of surprised inquiry, which would not have conduced to the two ladies’ equanimity had they been alone and unprotected by Major Winchester’s presence.
“Quick, Thomas,” he said, with a touch of imperiousness. “Call some one, or catch hold of his head yourself. Don’t you see the horse won’t stand, and the lady has to get down?”
Thomas bestirred himself to the extent of hallooing to an assistant gardener, who happened to be passing; then, when Paddy’s impatience was perforce calmed, he himself condescended to approach the back of the cart in a gingerly fashion. But Major Winchester was before him.
“I will help Mrs Wentworth down,” he said.
“Go at once and tell your mistress, or—or Miss Florence—no, unluckily, she’s out—Miss Helmont, if you can find her, that Mrs and Miss Wentworth have arrived by an earlier train. And tell Brewer to speak to me before he goes to the station; there’s some luggage to come up.”
Most of The Fells domestics liked “the Major,” as he was dubbed in the servants’ hall; but Thomas, lazy and conceited, was an exception. He disappeared, however, as he was told, but not without some inaudible mutterings.
“Queerish ladies,” he said to himself, “arriving before lunch and no luggage, nor maid, nor nothing. The luggage won’t be much to show when it do come, I’ll take my—” But here he was interrupted, and by no less a person than Trixie. Thomas’s face cleared: he wasn’t going to scour the country in search of Mrs Helmont, nor Miss neither. Here was one of the ladies; it did not in the least signify that Miss Beatrix was a byword for never doing anything she was asked to do, or being of any use to any one. She would serve his purpose, which was to get back to his morning paper and glass of beer “comfortable” in the pantry without delay.
“If you please, ma’am,” he began, “the Major’s at the hall door with two ladies, arrived unexpected, and I was to tell you.”
To his delight and rather to his surprise, instead of telling him to hunt up her sisters, Trixie stopped short with evident interest.