“We’ll, sure, get on the London road in two miles more or less, and then we’re all right,” said Tom.
“London, fiddle! It’s my belief, Thomas Teukesbury, you have not the faintest idea where we are; you haven’t, sir, no more than myself.”
“There isn’t a light nor a house. D⸺n the place!” retorted Tom, bitterly.
“Don’t curse—we’re bad enough. No impiety, please. You should command yourself, I think, if I do, while we are in this helpless and utterly unprotected situation.”
“There’s a man coming,” said Tom, hopefully.
“Good gracious!” cried my Aunt.
“No, there aint,” said Tom, dejectedly.
“Heaven be praised!” said my Aunt, with a gasp. “I look on it, sir, we’re in danger here on this dreadful moor, to which you, sir, have brought us. What a shame, Thomas, to pretend you knew the way! Winnie, Winnie Dobbs, we’re lost—lost on a heath! Tom has lost us!”
Winnie’s fat, forlorn face filled the back window of the vehicle.
“Lost on a heath, Winnie, in the middle of the night!”
“What’ll we best do, ma’am?” imploringly asked Winnie, who was accustomed to derive her stock of wisdom in all emergencies from my Aunt Margaret’s inspiration.
“Ask Thomas Teukesbury up there—he’s our guide. He brought us here, though he does not seem to know a way out. Ask him. I don’t know, no more than the man in the moon there.”
“I dessay we’re all right enough, after all,” said Tom, “only I don’t know it by this light. Will you get in, ma’am, and we’ll git on a bit, and we’ll, sure, light on a hinn or a public afore long.”
Well, she did get in. The horse was unmistakably fatigued, with a disposition to draw up every now and then, by an old tree, or under a steep bank, or sometimes without any special landmark to invite.
Tom got down, and walked by the brute’s dejected head; and my Aunt, who had given up the sarcastic and ironical mood as her alarms deepened, scolded him occasionally from the front window. As the back of his head and shoulders were presented, Tom walked on, not caring to turn about to reply, but, I am afraid, making some disrespectful remarks in the dark.
In fact, the poor horse, who, if he had but understood and spoken our language, could, probably, have saved them and himself a world of trouble, was so evidently done up that Tom insisted he must have his oats, and accordingly, he partook of that refreshment in a nosebag. Here was another delay. My Aunt’s watch had been frequently consulted, by the moonlight, during that anxious journey. It was now out again. The night was a little sharp, too; and the whole party, who had made no provision for such a climate and such hours, were rather cold. You may be sure my Aunt’s temper was not growing more agreeable.
There was just the alternative of a bivouac where they stood, or following, on chance, the road they had been pursuing. My Aunt adopted the latter. Affairs had grown so serious that she now never removed her face from the little front window, through which she looked ahead, with hope deferred, and a sick heart.
She had been so often deceived by marly banks and thickets, that it was not until they had almost reached it, to her inexpressible relief, she plainly saw the whitewashed front of a low, two-storied public, standing back from the road a few yards, and snugly sheltered among some thick and stunted trees.
My Aunt held the reins through the window, and Tom got down and summoned mine host. A red streak of candlelight shot out through the door of the pothouse, and there was a parley which she could not hear.
V
The Good Woman
Tom returned slowly. My Aunt’s heart sank.
“Well?”
“Only two rooms, ma’am, and lofts above, and the house full o’ tipsy colliers, dancing. But there’s an inn, called The Good Woman, only half a mile on, and lots o’ room.”
My Aunt breathed a sigh of relief, and was silently thankful. Then she repeated the news to Winnie, who joined in the jubilation.
About ten minutes more brought them, after a slight ascent, on a sudden, to a hollow, expanding to an amphitheatrical plain, encompassed by wooded, rising grounds, and near the centre of which rose two abrupt and oddly-shaped hillocks, like islands from a lake, and a very large pond from under a thick screen of trees, and the clustered gables and chimneys of The Good Woman shone mistily in the moonlight.
They drew up before the door of the inn. Old-fashioned and weather-stained it looked in the faint beams. The door was closed—it was past ten o’clock—but a glimmer of candle or firelight shone through the shutter chink at the right. My Aunt did not wait. There was no need to hold the reins of the timid horse, who coughed, snorted, and shook himself, with his nose near the ground.
My Aunt Margaret ran up the three broad steps, the dingy “Good Woman,” without a head, sarcastically swinging between the signposts at her left.
With the carpetbag in one hand, she hammered lustily at the knocker with the other. Tom, a little in the rear, with one foot on the steps, rested the trunk on his knee; and Winnie, with the basket of “prog” on her arm, stood dejectedly beside him.
There was some delay about opening the door, and when it was done, it was with a chain across, and a woman, with a coarse voice, and strong Irish accent, asked, not pleasantly, who was there.
“Travellers,” said my Aunt, “who have been led astray by the driver.”
“Where are yez from?”
“From Dramworth to Winderbrooke.”
“From Dhramworth to Windherbrooke! an’ he dhruv yez here! How many iv yez is in it?”
“Two ladies, a horse, a vehicle, and the driver.” Tom, the culprit, was degraded, and my Aunt placed him after the vehicle.
The maid of the inn, with high-cheek bones,
