The receipt of Mrs Trevelyan’s letter on that
Monday morning was a great surprise both to Mr and
Mrs Outhouse. There was no time for any consideration,
no opportunity for delaying their arrival till they
should have again referred the matter to Mr Trevelyan.
Their two nieces were to be with them on that evening,
and even the telegraph wires, if employed with such
purpose, would not be quick enough to stop their coming.
The party, as they knew, would have left Nuncombe Putney
before the arrival of the letter at the parsonage
of St.
Diddulph’s. There would have been
nothing in this to have caused vexation, had it not
been decided between Trevelyan and Mr Outhouse that
Mrs Trevelyan was not to find a home at the parsonage.
Mr Outhouse was greatly afraid of being so entangled
in the matter as to be driven to take the part of
the wife against the husband; and Mrs Outhouse, though
she was full of indignation against Trevelyan, was
at the same time not free from anger in regard to
her own niece. She more than once repeated that
most unjust of all proverbs, which declares that there
is never smoke without fire, and asserted broadly
that she did not like to be with people who could
not live at home, husbands with wives, and wives with
husbands, in a decent, respectable manner. Nevertheless
the preparations went on busily, and when the party
arrived at seven o’clock in the evening, two
rooms had been prepared close to each other, one for
the two sisters, and the other for the child and nurse,
although poor Mr Outhouse himself was turned out of
his own little chamber in order that the accommodation
might be given. They were all very hot, very
tired, and very dusty, when the cab reached the parsonage.
There had been the preliminary drive from Nuncombe
Putney to Lessboro’. Then the railway journey
from thence to the Waterloo Bridge Station had been
long. And it had seemed to them that the distance
from the station to St. Diddulph’s had been
endless. When the cabman was told whither he
was to go, he looked doubtingly at his poor old horse,
and then at the luggage which he was required to pack
on the top of his cab, and laid himself out for his
work with a full understanding that it would not be
accomplished without considerable difficulty.
The cabman made it twelve miles from Waterloo Bridge
to St. Diddulph’s, and suggested that extra
passengers and parcels would make the fare up to ten
and six. Had he named double as much Mrs Trevelyan
would have assented. So great was the fatigue,
and so wretched the occasion, that there was sobbing
and crying in the cab, and when at last the parsonage
was reached, even the nurse was hardly able to turn
her hand to anything. The poor wanderers were
made welcome on that evening without a word of discussion
as to the cause of their coming. ’I hope
you are not angry with us, Uncle Oliphant,’
Copyrights
He Knew He Was Right from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
