Molly stood still for a minute, then, looking up, she said, softly,--
"Would you mind coming with me, please?"
"No! not I!" said Mrs. Kirkpatrick, seeing that her compliance was
likely to be the most speedy way of getting through the affair; so
she took Molly's hand, and, on the way, in passing the group at the
piano, she said, smiling, in her pretty genteel manner,--
"Our little friend here is shy and modest, and wants me to accompany
her to Lady Cumnor to wish good-night; her father has come for her,
and she is going away."
Molly did not know how it was afterwards, but she pulled her hand out
of Mrs. Kirkpatrick's on hearing these words, and going a step or
two in advance came up to Lady Cumnor, grand in purple velvet, and
dropping a curtsey, almost after the fashion of the school-children,
she said,--
"My lady, papa is come, and I am going away; and, my lady, I wish
you good-night, and thank you for your kindness. Your ladyship's
kindness, I mean," she said, correcting herself as she remembered
Miss Browning's particular instructions as to the etiquette to be
observed to earls and countesses, and their honourable progeny, as
they were given that morning on the road to the Towers.
She got out of the saloon somehow; she believed afterwards, on
thinking about it, that she had never bidden good-by to Lady
Cuxhaven, or Mrs. Kirkpatrick, or "all the rest of them," as she
irreverently styled them in her thoughts.
Mr. Gibson was in the housekeeper's room, when Molly ran in, rather
to the stately Mrs. Brown's discomfiture. She threw her arms round
her father's neck. "Oh, papa, papa, papa! I am so glad you have
come;" and then she burst out crying, stroking his face almost
hysterically as if to make sure he was there.
"Why, what a noodle you are, Molly! Did you think I was going to give
up my little girl to live at the Towers all the rest of her life? You
make as much work about my coming for you, as if you thought I had.
Make haste, now, and get on your bonnet. Mrs. Brown, may I ask you
for a shawl, or a plaid, or a wrap of some kind to pin about her for
a petticoat?"
He did not mention that he had come home from a long round not half
an hour before, a round from which he had returned dinnerless and
hungry; but, on finding that Molly had not come back from the Towers,
he had ridden his tired horse round by Miss Brownings', and found
them in self-reproachful, helpless dismay. He would not wait to
listen to their tearful apologies; he galloped home, had a fresh
horse and Molly's pony saddled, and though Betty called after him
with a riding-skirt for the child, when he was not ten yards from his
own stable-door, he refused to turn back for it, but went off, as
Dick the stableman said, "muttering to himself awful."