"Give over! Where can yer be a-hid?"
Her Grace sprang up with amazing agility for so large a woman. She glanced around like a hunted elephant. She heard the noise of rapidly approaching wheels. Her protruding eye took in the aspect of the place, ravaging it for its possibilities of concealment. Then, with the wail of a thing at bay, she fled across the vegetable-garden, fought her way through a small but dense jungle of gooseberry bushes, and darted into the mushroom-house just as a hired fly containing Mrs. Verulam, Chloe, and the faithful Marriner drove up to the wicket-gate.
"She'll a-treadle down the spawn! She'll do a mischief on them there mushrims! Darn it all, I say!" was Mr. Minnidick's comment on her Grace's choice of sanctuary, while Mr. Bush, who—perhaps deliberately—became more and more lethargic with each accumulating disaster, solemnly started digging again, with the manner of a labourer totally isolated from all intercourse with human-kind.
The bed of sprouts, which seemed rapidly becoming the centre of a whirlpool of violent activities, was at some little distance from the residence of the paragon, and was partially concealed from the wicket-gate and the flower-garden by a small hedge of yew. For this reason, perhaps, the occupants of the hired fly did not at first observe that the garden was tenanted. After enquiring the way to the nearest inn, and being duly informed of the existence of the Elephant and Drum, Mrs. Verulam and Chloe descended from the vehicle, in which the faithful Marriner—looking rather pale—was deliberately driven away.
Mrs. Verulam approached the wicket-gate, leaned upon it, and breathed a gentle sigh.
"Ah, Chloe," she murmured; "how exquisitely peaceful it is! Just what I expected. No harm could happen here. No echoes from the cruel world could ever pierce to this haven. Here there are no intrigues, no quarrels, no secrets, no slanders. Here all is rest and happiness."
"Quite so, dear. And here, or at least very near here, at the Elephant and Drum, I shall be able to change my trousers. It is sweet!"
"It's like heaven!" said Mrs. Verulam ecstatically. "How little Mr. Bush knows that we are here, looking upon his birthplace"—the paragon was born at Brixton, but no matter—"breathing the same air he has so often breathed!"
"You're hardly scientific, Daisy. Besides, by this time Mr. Bush is reading your note at the palace, and the Duchess and all of them know of our departure."
"Ah—true; I had forgotten that. I wonder what the Duchess is saying."