There was no more said that night; but the next morning Mr. Williams gave the widow a short lecture on the manner in which he wished her to conduct herself toward those about her. "You are too humble and yielding," he said. "Of course, I do not expect you to change your character; but, recollect, you have me to stand by you. If Sarah Bond should annoy you, stand your ground. If the servants are impudent, dismiss them. If anything whatever happens displeasing to you, tell me the minute I get home, and I will set the matter right."
With that he went.
An hour after, a carriage drew up at the door, and a woman came into the house, and asked to see Mrs. Rowan. She was a woman of middle age, and looked nervous and worried.
"I am Miss Bird, Miss Clinton's companion," she announced. "Miss Clinton wants to see you right away. She has sent the carriage for you."
"Who is Miss Clinton?" Mrs. Rowan asked; "and what does she want of me?"
The companion looked at her in astonishment. Not know who Miss Clinton was! But it must be true that she did not, or she would not have presumed to ask the other question. "Miss Clinton is one of the first ladies in Boston," Miss Bird said, with quite a grand air. "When you go to her, she will probably tell you what she wants."
"Cannot she come to see me?" Mrs. Rowan asked.
This last piece of assumption was from the future Mrs. Williams, not from Mr. Williams's housekeeper.
"Why, what can you be thinking of?" the woman cried. "Miss Clinton must be eighty years old, if not ninety. I am not sure but she is a hundred."