"If she's poor," said Lady Otterburn, "it won't harm us to give her a shake-down and a sandwich or two as often as she wants 'em. I apprehend she'll make herself agreeable in return."
"That's where you make a mistake," replied Otterburn. "Aunt Sarah has never been known to make herself agreeable in her life. In fact, she prides herself upon doing the reverse. She'll tell you before you have known her two minutes that she always says what she thinks. And she won't be telling you a lie."
"Two can play at that game," said Lady Otterburn. "Most times I say what I think myself."
"But you only think pleasant things," replied her husband. "My flower of the prairie!"
Now, Chicago is not exactly a prairie, but the young Countess of Otterburn was pretty and graceful enough to deserve the most high-flown compliments, and appreciated them when they came from her husband. She therefore graciously accepted his latest flight of imagination, and told him to write to Aunt Sarah and invite her to come to Castle Gide and stay as long as she found it convenient.
Aunt Sarah came a week later with a considerable amount of luggage, but no maid. The motor-omnibus was sent to the station to meet her, in spite of her nephew's warnings.
"She'll arrive as cross as can be," he said. "She hates motors of every description, and I don't suppose has ever been on one in her life."
"Then it's time she tried it," said Lady Otterburn. "There isn't a horse in the place that could draw a buggy fourteen miles to the depôt and back and bring her here in time for dinner."
"Well, you'll see," said Otterburn. "She'll tell us what she thinks of us when she gets here."
She did. The powerful motor-omnibus drew up before the door of Castle Gide—at which Lord and Lady Otterburn were standing to receive their guest—having completed the seven-mile journey from the station in about five-and-twenty minutes. The driver and the footman beside him wore expressions of apprehensive discomfort, and the latter jumped down off his seat to open the door at the back of the vehicle with some alacrity.