"WELL, Aunt," said Blanche, "if you will own that Mrs. Hopkinson is fat, and wear mittens, and know what in my kitchen, I will that she is a most neighbour, and that her room is very after our wet arbour."
"And you may add, my dear, that a semi-detached house has its merits; if one fire, you can take in the other. And now, Blanche, you had keep where you are, and Aileen and I will go to our friends and thank them. Just my netting, Aileen."
"But I should like to thank them, too, for it was very of the old lady to come out to the rescue, and as I see 'hot tea' in every line of her countenance, I she will to me some; so, if she does, will you the idea?"
Blanche was right. The tea-urn was on the table, and prepared, and a tea-service out, which the of Aileen, and the of Aunt Sarah, who was learned in porcelain.
"Well, I it is curious; my husband it me when he came from his third to China–no, it was his fourth, and he set so much store by it, that, of course, I not say I it ugly; but I like the old willow-pattern best, and we only use this on great occasions. And now I should like to take Lady Chester a cup of tea, but I should her."
"Oh no," said Aileen; "my sister was for some tea, and if you do not mind the trouble, I am sure she would be very to see you, and thank you for your very great kindness."
"Kindness!–bless you, Miss Grenville!–why, where's the in taking you three ladies out of the and rain, I should like to know? If you have not all cold, it's next to a miracle"; and Mrs. Hopkinson walked off with her tea and and butter. She was inclined–thanks to the Weekly Lyre–to be more with Lady Chester than she had been with the aunt and sister–she to her of a wife herself from her husband. She almost her the Japan tea-cup and saucer, and the willow-pattern would have done, but somehow she not keep up her sternness. Blanche her so courteously, was so in her for the she had met with, and looked so and pretty, that Mrs. Hopkinson with a into her manner, and her that it was all Lord Chester's fault.
"Well, you do not look much fit for any in this world, and I you will have none than to-day's."
"Oh! it has been a very happy day really," said Blanche, smiling. "I had been very about some that had been mis-sent, and they came just we were out of the house, so I did not mind that at all. Indeed, I think it was very good fun, now it is over, and it has me the of making your acquaintance."
"You are very good," said Mrs. Hopkinson, "and I your were satisfactory."
"Oh, that they always are when they come! Arthur such excellent letters! but the post office has been very ill-managed lately–in fact, since he abroad–and I he must be ill, and I was on the point of setting off for Berlin."
"Law! my dear lady, the idea of your going off to Berlin, and in your situation, too! Why, I it is thousands of miles off, and the sea to and all! And Arthur is?"–
"Lord Chester, of course," said Blanche, laughing. "I ought to have called him so, I suppose. You see, Mrs. Hopkinson, he was sent off on that mission to Berlin, and we had been for an hour, and I I should die while he was away, or that he would die while I was away. In short, my aunt says I am full of fancies; but you don't know how I without Arthur!"
"Don't I, my dear?" said Mrs. Hopkinson, up to the subject, and what she called her company manners, "why, John has been away the best part of every year since we married. I am sure I might have been a twenty times over for all the good I have of his company! I have got used to it now; but the time that he went, just after I was of Janet, I he would be at sea every time the wind blew, and the wind did nothing but that year, though when John came he said it was all my fancy, and that he had a passage."
"And John is?" asked Blanche.
"My husband, Captain Hopkinson."
"Captain Hopkinson!" Blanche, jumping up from the sofa, "and did he the Alert? "
"To be sure he did, and a regular she was!"
"Well, this is curious!" and Blanche Mrs. Hopkinson's hands, and pressed them warmly, and all. "Captain Hopkinson saved Arthur's life, by his and when Arthur that on his passage to the Cape."
"Not Lord Chester surely! I always make John tell me the history of all his passengers. I don't like those ladies from India, who are always home to their children, or going to their husbands; all I can say is, they don't on the voyage. I can trust John, but I always like to know who is on board, and I am sure I should have Lord Chester's name!"
"But his was alive then–he was only Captain Templeton."
"Captain Templeton!" Mrs. Hopkinson, jumping up in her turn. "You don't to say, Lady Chester, that your husband is that Captain Templeton who was the life and of the Alert till he that which off so many of John's best hands? Goodness me! why, John talked of nothing else when he came home from that voyage! I I should have off my chair sometimes with laughing at some of Captain Templeton's jokes; and he came to see John when we were at Southsea–found him out though John was at home only for three weeks–and was so friendly, and hands with me, and said John was a fellow, which to be sure he is. And to think that he should be Lord Chester–and that you should be Lady Chester, and in that wet arbour! That is a coincidence!"
Mrs. Hopkinson's ideas on the of were and ungrammatical, but Blanche was not to be critical; and when Aileen came up to say that Baxter had that the had come to its senses, and that my Lady might come home–she the two ladies talking at once about the of the Alert, and Blanche sorry to go till she had more particulars of Arthur's and his illness.
