“Are your sisters young like yourself?” he asked, rather abruptly.
“Oh, yes, we are all much of an age.”
“And you have parents?”
“Only one parent,” she corrected,—“a mother. Ah, here we are at the Friary! Many thanks for your escort, Mr. Dancy.”
“Many thanks for allowing me to escort you,” he returned, pointedly: “after what you have told me, I esteem it an honor, Miss Challoner. No, you have no need to be ashamed of your position; I wish more English ladies would follow such a noble example. Good-night. I trust we shall meet again.” And, lifting his felt hat, he withdrew, just as Nan appeared on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand.
“You naughty girl, what has kept you so late?” she asked, as Phillis came slowly and meditatively up the flagged path.
“Hush, Nannie! Have they all gone to bed? Let me come into your room and talk to you. Oh, I have had such an evening!” 212 And thereupon she poured into her sister’s astonished ears the recital of her adventure,—the storm, the figure in the shubbery, the scene in the west corridor, the porch at Ivy Cottage, and the arrival of Mrs. Williams’s mysterious lodger.
“Oh, Phillis, I shall never trust you out of my sight again! How can you be so reckless,—so incautious? Mother would be dreadfully shocked if she knew it.”
“Mother must not know a single word: promise, Nan. You know how nervous she is. I will tell her, if you like, that I took refuge from the rain in Mrs. Williams’s porch, and that her lodger walked home with me; but I think it would be better to suppress the scene at the White House.”
Nan thought over this a moment, and then she agreed.