I might be over this way again if the weather held
good, and if I came I 'd bring you. She said right off she 'd take
great pleasure in havin' a visit from you; I was surprised, she's
usually so retirin'."

Even this reassurance did not quell a faint apprehension on our part;
there was something distinctly formal in the occasion, and one felt
that consciousness of inadequacy which is never easy for the humblest
pride to bear. On the way I had torn my dress in an unexpected
encounter with a little thornbush, and I could now imagine how it felt
to be going to Court and forgetting one's feathers or her Court train.

The Queen's Twin was oblivious of such trifles; she stood waiting with
a calm look until we came near enough to take her kind hand. She was a
beautiful old woman, with clear eyes and a lovely quietness and
genuineness of manner; there was not a trace of anything pretentious
about her, or high-flown, as Mrs. Todd would say comprehensively.
Beauty in age is rare enough in women who have spent their lives in the
hard work of a farmhouse; but autumn-like and withered as this woman
may have looked, her features had kept, or rather gained, a great
refinement. She led us into her old kitchen and gave us seats, and
took one of the little straight-backed chairs herself and sat a short
distance away, as if she were giving audience to an ambassador. It
seemed as if we should all be standing; you could not help feeling that
the habits of her life were more ceremonious, but that for the moment
she assumed the simplicities of the occasion.

Mrs. Todd was always Mrs. Todd, too great and self-possessed a soul for
any occasion to ruffle. I admired her calmness, and presently the slow
current of neighborhood talk carried one easily along; we spoke of the
weather and the small adventures of the way, and then, as if I were
after all not a stranger, our hostess turned almost affectionately to
speak to me.

"The weather will be growing dark in London now. I expect that you 've
been in London, dear?" she said.

"Oh, yes," I answered. "Only last year."

"It is a great many years since I was there, along in the forties,"
said Mrs. Martin. "'T was the only voyage I ever made; most of my
neighbors have been great travelers. My brother was master of a
vessel, and his wife usually sailed with him; but that year she had a
young child more frail than the others, and she dreaded the care of it
at sea. It happened that my br