All this long while I had not given a thought to Mrs Bowater. We stood before her at last in her oil-cloth passage, like Adam and Eve in the Garden. Her oldest bonnet on her head, she was just about to set off to the police station. And instead of showing her gratitude that her anxieties on my account were over, Mrs Bowater cast us the blackest of looks. Leaving Mr Anon to make our peace with her, I ran off to change my clothes. As I emerged from my bedroom, he entered at the door, in an old trailing pilot coat many sizes too large for him, and I found to my astonishment that he and my landlady had become the best of friends. I marvelled. This little achievement of Mr Anon's made me like him—all of a burst—ten times as much, I believe, as he would have been contented that I should love him.
Indeed the "high tea" Mrs Bowater presided over that afternoon, sitting above her cups and saucers just like a clergyman, is one of the gayest memories of my life. And yet—she had left the room for a moment to fetch something from the kitchen, and as, in a self-conscious hush, Mr Anon and I sat alone together, I caught a glimpse of her on her return pausing in the doorway, her capped head almost touching the lintel—and looking in on us with a quizzical, benign, foolish expression on her face, like that of a grown-up peeping into a child's dolls' house. So swirling a gust of hatred and disillusionment swept over me at sight of her, that for some little while I dared not raise my eyes and look at Mr Anon. All affection and gratitude fled away. Miss M. was once more an Ishmael!
Lyme Regis
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Out of a cab from a livery stable Mrs Bowater and I alighted at our London terminus next morning, to find positively awaiting us beside the wooden platform a first-class railway carriage—a palatial apartment. Swept and garnished, padded and varnished—a miracle of wealth! At this very moment I seem to be looking up in awe at the orange-rimmed (I think it was orange) label stuck on the glass whose inscription I afterwards spelled out backwards from within: "Mrs Bywater and Party." As soon as we and our luggage were safely settled, an extremely polite and fatherly guard locked the door on us. At this Mrs Bowater was a little troubled by the thought of how we should fare in the event of an accident. But he reassured her.
"Never fear, ma'am: accidents are strictly forbidden on this line. Besides which," he added, with a solemn, turtle-like stare, "if I turn the key on the young lady, none of them young a-ogling Don Jooans can force their way in. Strict orders, ma'am."