Chapter 7: Introductions

MRS. EFFINGHAM had set her heart on a comfortable tête-à-tête with her “young preserver,” as she called Dorothea. But things do not always turn out according to our previous planning; and a little before four o’clock, the front door bell sounded vigorously.

“Dear me! How tiresome! Now I know who that is,” murmured the old lady, —not so very old either, for she was only sixty-five; and as everybody knows, sixty-five in the present age of hygiene is not at all advanced. She was very well kept too; little and slender, with a soft pale skin which had not forgotten how to blush, and brown hair only streaked with silver, and brown eyes capable of sparkling still, though not so large as they once had been. She wore a dainty cap of real lace, and a black lace shawl over a dress of black satin. The elderly style of attire gave her a look of greater youth.

“I know who that is,” repeated Mrs. Effingham, sighing. Like many people who live alone, she had a habit of talking to herself half-aloud. “Nobody rings like Miss Henniker, and she said she would come before I left. But I wish she had waited till to-morrow.”

“Miss Henniker,” announced the trim parlour-maid. Mrs. Effingham kept no men-servants, though well able to do so in point of worldly goods. She did not like the responsibility, she said, and “men wanted men to manage them.”

Despite her little soliloquy, Mrs. Effingham came forward in a cordial manner to welcome the caller, —a spare middle-aged single lady, of the “usual age,” sharp-featured, and conspicuously fashionable in dress.

“My dear Miss Henniker! How do you do? How good of you to come! So busy as you always are,” the elder lady’s soft voice said, not untruthfully, for she really did count it “good”; only she suppressed the fact that some other afternoon would have been preferable. If Miss Henniker’s visits were, like those of angels, few and far between, they were unlike angels’ visits in duration. Miss Henniker was a careful economiser of time; and when she did get to a friend’s house, she commonly paid six calls in one, thereby saving herself ten walks to and from that house. The reasoning will be found, on examination, unimpeachable.

“How do you do? Quite well, thanks. I have been planning for weeks to see you, but—thanks, this will do nicely,” said Miss Henniker, planting herself in the chair which Mrs. Effingham had destined for Dorothea. She did it with the air of one not lightly to be dislodged. “Extremely busy lately, but I have contrived for once an hour’s leisure. Really, it is quite dreadful, the way one’s time gets filled up. I am told that you are leaving town directly. And you have had an accident! Nothing serious, I hope.”

“O no; but it might have been,” said Mrs. Effingham. She was aware that, if she did not wish to lengthen Miss Henniker’s visit, it would be wiser not to speak of Dorothea; only the temptation was irresistible. “I slipped down coming out of Church on Christmas Day. Oh, I really was not hurt—” in answer to a commiserating sound, —”but I might have been. A hansom drove round the corner, and was almost upon me. I could not possibly move in time, and I must have been run over—killed, most likely—if a young lady had not darted forward and pulled me out of the way. Yes, quite a stranger, and such a nice-looking lady-like girl. I have not seen her since, but she is coming to tea this afternoon, —at least, I hope so. You will stay and see her too, of course,” pursued the gentle old lady, vanquished by Miss Henniker’s energetic signs of sympathy. “My young preserver, I call her: and really, you know, it was a most courageous thing to do. She might have been killed in saving me. We might both have been killed.”