When Agnes and George get off, he follows quickly, still without their noticing him. He sees the house they enter, surveys the neighborhood, repeats the number to himself, and then walks up the street and around the block, apparently in deep thought. When he comes around to the house again, he goes slowly up the steps, and reads “Thorndyke” upon the door. This seems to puzzle him. He looks around the neighborhood again.
“No; I am right,” he says; “that is the church opposite, and this is the number, but what does this name mean! John Thorndyke is dead, but she seems to prefer his name! Well, I’ll just see.” And he rings the bell.
“Is Mrs. Thorndyke in?” he says to the maid who opens the door.
“There hain’t no Mrs. Thorndyke,” says the girl, taking it as a personal grievance that he is not aware of this fact.
“Oh! well, the lady of the house—Mrs. Vanderlyn,” he says, not wishing to appear too ignorant before this austere damsel. Now she is exasperated.
“There hain’t nobody of that name, neither; but isn’t it Mrs. Rodney you want?”
The moment he hears this name, he appears satisfied, and, without noticing the girl’s rudeness, he says:
“That is the lady I mean.”
“Well, she’s in.” And the girl waves her hand to the open parlor door, as if she disdains further words with him. She suspects he hasn’t known the name of Rodney at all before she mentioned it. All his offence is in asking a question which she has been obliged to answer several times before to pedlars and others of that kind, but she visits upon him the accumulated vexation caused by his predecessors.
“What name shall I take to her?” she asks, with an unpleasant emphasis, as if she doubts whether he knows his own name, or has any.