'Mr. Falkirk,' said his ward, 'do you consider that a remnant of the dark ages?'
'It keeps its place too gracefully for that,' said her guardian dropping his voice, as he looked across Wych Hazel out of the coach window.
'Mr. Falkirk' (sotto voce), 'you are charming!—Between ourselves, this is a hard place to keep gracefully. Please take out your watch, sir.'
Which Mr. Falkirk did, and silently showed it. Forth to meet his came a little gold hunting watch from behind the brown veil.
'You are a minute slow, sir—as usual.' Then very softly,—'Mr. Falkirk, what with being pressed and repressed, I am dying by quarter inches! Just introduce me for your grandmother, will you, and I will matronize the party.'
A request Mr. Falkirk complied with by entering forthwith into a long business discussion with another occupant of the stage coach, also known to him; in which stocks, commercial regulations, political enterprises, and the relative bearings of the same, precluded all reference to anything else whatever. Nobody's grandmother could have had less (visible) attention than Miss Hazel, up to the time when the coach rolled up to the door of a wayside inn, and the party got out to a luncheon or early dinner, as some of them would have called it. Then indeed she had enough. Mr. Falkirk handed her out and handed her in; straight to the gay carpeted "Ladies' room;" shut the door carefully, and asked her what she would have. No other lady was there to dispute possession.
'Only a broiled chicken, sir—and a soufflé—and potatoes à la crême au gratin,' said Miss Hazel, throwing off her bonnet and curling herself down on the arm of the sofa. 'Mr. Falkirk, all my previous acquaintance with cushions was superficial!—And could you just open the window, sir, and throw back the blinds? last November is in this room, apples and all.'
Mr. Falkirk obeyed directions, remarking that people who travel in search of their fortune must expect to meet with November in unexpected places; and then went off into the general eating-room, and by and by, from there or some other insalubrious region came a servant, with half of an imperfectly broiled fowl and muddy dish of coffee, flanked by a watery pickled cucumbers. Mr. Falkirk himself presently returned.
'How does it go?' he said.
'What, Mr. Falkirk?' the young lady was curled down in one corner of the sofa, much like a kitten; a small specimen of which animal purred complacently on her shoulder.