Many helped her on the way, and eventually she reached a little Midlands village, still over sixty miles from her destination. It had grown dark, and was raining heavily; and as she stood in the shadow, gazing rather longingly at a warmly lighted inn, the door of which stood invitingly open, revealing an interior that seemed to be all bright reds and warm browns, and which, at all events, promised shelter, a heavy motor-van, on the sides and back of which was painted, in big, white letters, “Job Greentree, Carrier,” drew up, and from it descended a big man muffled in enormous coats, and sporting a huge beard. He lifted three or four parcels from the interior of the van, and strode into the inn, leaving the door of the vehicle a few inches open.
Mary crept forward. Here, at all events, was shelter and a means of covering a few more miles. That it might be going in an opposite direction did not occur to her. She clambered easily into the car, and, creeping into the shadows at the far end, lay down on something soft, warm, and comfortable, though whether sacks or rugs, she did not know. What happened thereafter was a total blank to her. She lapsed straightway into a stupor that was more unconsciousness than sleep, and lay thus, oblivious to everything.
When she came to herself she was seated, swathed in blankets, before a wood fire that roared and crackled half-way up the chimney of an old-fashioned grate, while, bending over her, with a mug of steaming brandy in one hand and a spoon in the other, was the motherly, anxious face of a woman.
The carrier—he combined the office with those of village wheelwright, blacksmith and undertaker, and was known far and wide as Job—had drawn up with a rattle at the door of the cottage that stood alongside the smithy, had dismounted and lumbered round to the back of his van.
“By gum!” he said slowly. “That’s a rum un—it is an’ all.”
The door of the cottage was open, sending a shaft of warm light across the roadway.
“Hallo! hallo! Mother, come here and look at this,” the big man shouted.
The woman standing in the porch caught a wrap from one of the hooks behind the door and flung it over her head, then went to the car, where her husband stood with the light of his electric lantern blazing upon Mary, who lay wet through and motionless from utter weariness and exhaustion.
“A girl! Who is she, Job?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know,” the bearded man replied. “I never saw her before. I wonder where she got in.”