“I’m not suprised, Winnie,” said my Aunt, snuffing her candle, as she and her confidential handmaid sat by the fire, in her diminutive drawing-room, at their tea; “not the least. Did you ever know one man tell of another when a woman was concerned? John Pendle has been my tenant eleven years and knows all about that roguish snuff-man; but he won’t tell me one iota about him. Not that Browning is anything on earth to him. I suppose he doesn’t care if Browning was hanged; but simply Browning is a man, and I a woman. That’s it, Winnie—that’s all—I’m to be robbed, and no one to prevent it. A conspiracy I call it. I tell you, Winnie, I never knew one man prevent another’s robbing a woman, except when he hoped to rob her himself.”
Honest Dobbs’s fat face and round eyes looked distressed over her teacup at her mistress, while she discoursed; and she made answer only by that expressive but unspellable tick-tick-ticking made by the tip of the tongue at the back of the teeth.
“And rob me they would, Winnie, if I were half such a fool as you, for instance. But I’ll show them there are women who do know something of business.”
And she nodded mysteriously, but briskly, on her maid with a side-glance of her dark eye.
“I mean to start tomorrow morning, after breakfast, at eight o’clock. You come with me, Winnie, and we’ll sleep tomorrow night at Winderbrooke, and that, I think, will surprise them.”
II
My Aunt Margaret on the Road
Old Tom Teukesbury, from the “Bull,” was not at the little wicket of Aunt Margaret’s habitation until sixteen minutes past nine.
As Tom drew up, driving a one-horse covered vehicle, the name and fashion of which have long passed away, my Aunt, fully equipped was standing on the step of her open door, with her watch in her right hand, the dial of which she presented grimly at Tom, perched in the distance on the box.
Tom’s lean, mulberry-coloured face, sharp nose, and cold gray eyes winced not at the taunt.
“It’s easy a showin’ a watch. I’d like to know where the ’oss is to come from, if maister sends the grey to Huntley, and Jack can’t go in harness noways; and here’s the bay can’t go neither without a brushing boot; and I’m to go down to Hoxton to borrow one of Squire; there’s a raw there as big as my hand—you don’t want her to founder ’twixt this and Muckleston, I’m sure; and you wouldn’t be so hard on the brute, to drive her without one—and that’s why, ma’am.”
Tom’s way with women when he was late, was to complicate the case, with an issue on farriery, which soon shuts them up.
So Winnifred got in with a basket of edibles, and the carpetbag on the seat beside my Aunt, who entered the vehicle severely.
It was a journey of nearly forty miles, by crossroads, to Winderbrooke. All geographers well know the range of hills that lie between Hoxton and that town. The landscape is charming—the air invigorating. But the pull up the steep road that scales the side of the hill, is severe. The bay-mare showed signs of her soft feeding. She was hirsute, clumsy, and sudorous. She had a paunch, and now and then a cavernous cough.
The progress was, therefore, slow; and the ladies, every here and there, up particularly stiff bits, were obliged to get out and walk, which, although my Aunt might not mind it much, distressed good Winnifred Dobbs, who was in no condition for executing an excelsior movement on foot.
Near the summit of the hill the ladies waxed hungry; so, it was presumed, did the mare. The party halted; the nosebag was applied; the basket was opened; Tom had a couple of clumsy sandwiches; the ladies partook; and the bay mare enjoyed her repast with that pleasant crisp crunching, which agreeably suggests good grinders and a good grist.
There was still a little pull before reaching the crown of the hill. Winnifred could walk no more; but my Aunt trod nimbly up the ascent, and on reaching the summit, made a halt, and, like an invading general, viewed with an eye at once curious and commanding, the country that lay beneath.
She was looking for Winderbrooke close by the foot of the hill.
“Where’s the town?” demanded my Aunt.
“Wat toon, ma’am?” inquired Tom.
“Winderbrooke, to be sure.”
“Well, Winderbrooke will be there.”
Tom was pistoling Winderbrooke with his whip.
“Where?”
“You see the steeple there?”
“Ay.”
“Well, that isn’t it.”
“No?”
“Now, ye’ll see a bit of a rock or a hillock atop o’ that hill.”
“That hill—well?”
“Now, follow that line on past that whitish thing ye see.”
“You don’t mean on that remote plain? Why, man, that’s the horizon.”
“Well, it’s beyond that a little bit, over the rising ground that will be jest there; and folks say, on a clear day, you may see the smoke o’ the toon over it, though I never did.”
There was a pause, and my Aunt looked stern and black toward the remote objects which he indicated and neither could see, and then she looked back over her shoulder in the direction of home. I can’t say what was passing in her mind; but she looked forward again, and with an angry side-glance at Tom, she said—
“Why, it’s a perfect journey!”
There was another pause, and she said with a dry abruptness, “Let me in, please;” and in the same defiant tone, “Go on!”
And she drew up the window with a sharp clang in Tom’s face.
She sat stiff and silent, and sniffed
