“It is very strange; very wrong of Ascott.  Hilary, you surely told him the hour correctly.  For once, at least, he might have been in time”

So chafed Miss Selina, while Elizabeth, who by some miraculous effort of intuitive genius, had succeeded in collecting the luggage, was now engaged in defending it from all comers, especially porters, and making of it a comfort able seat for Miss Leaf.

“Nay, have patience, Selina.  We will give him just five minutes more, Hilary.”

And Johanna sat down, with her sweet, calm, long suffering face turned upward to that younger one, which was, as youth is apt to be, hot, and worried, and angry.  And so they waited till the terminus was almost deserted, and the last cab had driven off, when, suddenly, dashing up the station yard out of another, came Ascott.

He was so sorry, so very sorry, downright grieved, at having kept his aunts waiting.  But his watch was wrong—­some fellows at dinner detained him—­the train was before its time surely.  In fact, his aunts never quite made out what the excuse was; but they looked into his bright handsome face, and their wrath melted like clouds before the sun.  He was so gentlemanly, so well dressed—­much better dressed than even at Stowbury—­and he seemed so unfeignedly glad to see them.  He handed them all into the cab—­even Elizabeth. though whispering meanwhile to his Aunt Hilary, “What on earth did you bring her for?” and their was just going to leap on to the box himself, when he stopped to ask “Where he should tell cabby to drive to?”

“Where to?” repeated his aunts in undisguised astonishment.  They had never thought of any thing but of being taken home at once by their boy.

“You see,” Ascott said, in a little confusion, “you wouldn’t be comfortable with me.  A young fellow’s lodgings are not like a house of one’s own, and, besides—­”

“Besides, when a young fellow is ashamed of his old aunts, he can easily find reasons.”

“Hush, Selina!” interposed Miss Leaf.  “My dear boy, your old aunts would never let you inconvenience yourself for them.  Take us to an inn for the night, and to morrow we will find lodgings for ourselves.”

Ascott looked greatly relieved.

“And you are not vexed with me, Aunt Johanna?” said he, with something of his old childish tone of compunction, as he saw—­he could not help seeing—­the utter weariness which Johanna tried so hard to hide.

“No, my dear, not vexed.  Only I wish we had known this a little sooner that we might have made arrangements.  Now, where shall we go?”

Ascott mentioned a dozen hotels, but they found he only knew them by name.  At last Miss Leaf remembered one, which her father used to go to, on his frequent journeys to London, and whence, indeed, he had been brought home to die.  And though all the recollections about it were sad enough, still it felt less strange than the rest, in this dreariness of London.  So she proposed going to the “Old Bell,” Holborn.