“Well, your business is not mine, Miss; but somehow, I think you have been cheating your schoolmistress. But come your way, till I can see for somebody to go with you.”
I only wish some of my young readers could have seen Miss Bruce, how simple she looked when she followed the coachman into the inn. She wished to be at school, and with Miss Damer again—but it was then too late.
And here I would advise young people to beware of the first wrong step, for it generally leads to trouble and mortification, and often to disgrace.
Miss Bruce stood some time unnoticed at the entrance of a large room, partitioned into boxes. Waiters and travellers just looked at the young lady, and then passed on: people were too much engaged, with dishes, papers, packages, and glasses, to attend to the little stranger.
At length, however, one solitary gentleman, who perhaps had daughters of his own, took compassion upon the forlorn traveller.
“Come hither, my dear, and sit by me.”
Miss Bruce gladly accepted the offer, for she was a strange figure for a stage coach passenger. Her white frock was rumpled, and in a sad state from the blow she had received; the tippet was in the same style; her old green silk garden bonnet hung half off her head. One of her long sleeves she had untied from her tippet, and taken it off; the other remained. Garden gloves, cut at the fingers, completed the dress. Thus neatly attired, in an hour and ten minutes after her arrival in London she was ushered by a new footman into her father’s study, where he was seated reading a pamphlet. In a moment he turned the book open upon the table, raised one of the candlesticks above his head, and with a keen satirical look exclaimed, “what runaway is this?”
“Papa, it is I!” This was said in a very trembling accent.
“And pray who is I, that comes thus attired, and unasked at this unseasonable hour? Only wants three minutes of eleven,” said Mr. Bruce as he fixed his eyes upon the time-piece. “With whom did you travel?”
“With a little boy, and a great man, papa, and a little woman, with a baby and a lapdog.”