"But, my dear----"
"Now send her packing. Do you hear me, Michieson?"
He was going to remonstrate, but Sophia intervened. Spent with fatigue, her feet sore and blistered, she felt that she could not go a yard further. Moreover, to eyes dazed by the horrors of the night, the thatched house among the rose-briars, with its hum of bees and scent of woodbine and honey-suckle, seemed a haven of peace. She raised her voice. "Mrs. Michieson," she said, "your husband need not go to Sir Hervey's. I am Lady Coke."
With a cry of amazement a thin, red-faced woman, scantily dressed in an old soiled wrapper that had known a richer wearer--for Mrs. Michieson had been a lady's maid--pushed through the bushes. She stared a moment with all her eyes; then she burst into a rude laugh. "You mean her woman, I should think," she said. "Why, you saucy piece, you must think us fine simpletons to try for to come over us with that story. Lady Coke in her stockinged feet, indeed!"
"I have been robbed," Sophia faltered, trying not to break down. "You are a woman. Surely you have some pity for another woman in trouble?"
"Aye, you are like enough to have been in trouble! That I can see!" the parson's lady answered with a sneer. "But I'll trouble you not to call me a woman!" she continued, tossing her head. "Woman, indeed! A pretty piece you are to call names, trapesing the country like a guy, and--why, whose cloak have you there? Michieson!" in a voice like vinegar. "What does this mean?"
"My dear," he said humbly--Sophia, on the verge of tears, could say no more lest she should break down, "the--the lady was robbed on the road. She was travelling in her carriage----"
"In her carriage?"
"And her servants ran away--as I understand," he explained, rubbing his hands, and smiling in a sickly way, "and the postboys did not return, and--and her woman----"
"Her woman!"