"There's no train due for a good while, mamma; they couldn't come for two or three hours. I think we had better have tea."
So she went off to prepare it, just as Matilda who had put her face outside of the window curtain, proclaimed that somebody was coming to the door.
"Only one person though, mamma. Mamma! it's Miss Redwood—Mr. Richmond's Miss Redwood."
"It wanted but that!" Mrs. Englefield exclaimed, with a sort of resigned despair. "Let her in, Matilda. I locked the door."
The person who followed Matilda to the sitting-room was a slim woman, in black costume, neither new nor fashionable. Indeed, it had no such pretensions; for the fashion at that time was for small bonnets, but Miss Redwood's shadowed her face with a reminiscence of the coal-scuttle shapes, once worn many years before. The face under the bonnet was thin and sharp-featured; yet a certain delicate softness of skin saved it from being harsh; there was even a little peachy bloom on the cheeks. The eyes were soft and keen at once; at least there was no want of benevolence in them, while their glance was swift and shrewd enough, and full of business activity.
"Miss Redwood, how do you do? I am glad to see you. Do sit down," was Mrs. Englefield's salutation, made without rising.
"How do you do, Mis' Englefield? Why—seems as if you was expectin' folks here?"
"Just what we are doing; and it is some of the hardest work one can do."
"Depends on who you expect, seems to me. And I guess 'tain't harder work than what I've been doing to-day. I've been makin' soap. Got it done, too. And 'tain't to do agin till this time next year comes round."
"Can you make enough at once for the whole year? I cannot."