No wonder the plain people of Ridgeville, to whom poke bonnets, and jersey jackets, and long gloves, and pointed toes, were then new, were startled, and a little abashed at so much foreign style, especially as it was accompanied by nobility in the person of Lord Hardy. At him the people stared curiously, deciding that he was not much to look at if he was a lord, and wondering if he was after Augusta.
"Her mother will bust, if he is. She has about as much as she can do to keep herself together now. I wonder if she has forgot that she was once a hired girl, and worked like the rest of us?" was whispered by some of the envious ones.
But this was before they had received Mrs. Browne's greeting, which was just as cordial as of old, and her voice was just as loud and hearty. She didn't mean to be stuck up because she'd been abroad; she was a democrat to her back-bone, she had frequently asserted, and she carried out her principles, and shook hands with everybody, and kissed a great many, and thanked them for coming to meet her; and then, with her husband, Augusta, and Lord Hardy, entered her handsome carriage and was driven toward home.
The French maid went in the omnibus, while Allen drove Daisy himself in the pony phaeton, not a little proud of the honor, and the attention he was attracting as he took his seat beside the beautiful woman, whose face had never looked fairer or sweeter than it did under the widow's bonnet.
"What a lovely pony! Is he gentle? and do you think I might venture to drive him?" Daisy asked, with a pretty affectation of girlishness, as they left the station; and Allen instantly put the reins in her hands, and leaning languidly back, watched her admiringly, with a strange thrill of something undefinable in his heart.
"Do we pass Miss McPherson's house?" Daisy asked and he replied: "Yes, at a little distance; and we can go very near to it by taking the road across the common," and he indicated the direction. "That is the place, with all those cherry trees," he continued, pointing toward the unpretentious house where Miss Betsey McPherson had lived for so many years, and where she now sat upon the piazza, with Hannah Jerrold at her side.
Miss Betsey had been in Boston for two weeks, and had only returned home that morning, finding Bessie's letter of thanks, written so long ago and not forwarded to her until one of the firm in London heard of Archie's death. This letter she had read with a great feeling of pity for and yearning toward the young girl who had written it.