A Novice amongst the Great Folk

At ten o’clock on the eventful Thursday, the Towers carriage began its work. Molly was ready long before it made its first appearance, although it had been settled that she and the Miss Brownings were not to go until the last, or fourth, time of its coming. Her face had been soaped, scrubbed, and shone brilliantly clean; her frills, her frock, her ribbons were all snow-white. She had on a black mode cloak that had been her mother’s; it was trimmed round with rich lace, and looked quaint and old-fashioned on the child. For the first time in her life she wore kid gloves; hitherto she had only had cotton ones. Her gloves were far too large for the little dimpled fingers, but, as Betty had told her they were to last her for years, it was all very well. She trembled many a time, and almost turned faint once with the long expectation of the morning. Betty might say what she liked about a watched pot never boiling; Molly never ceased to watch the approach through the winding street, and after two hours the carriage came for her at last. She had to sit very forward to avoid crushing the Miss Brownings’ new dresses; and yet not too forward, for fear of incommoding fat Mrs. Goodenough and her niece, who occupied the front seat of the carriage: so that, although the fact of sitting down at all was rather doubtful, to add to her discomfort, Molly felt herself to be very conspicuously placed in the centre of the carriage, a mark for all the observation of Hollingford. It was far too much of a gala day for the work of the little town to go forward with its usual regularity. Maid-servants gazed out of upper windows; shop-keepers’ wives stood on the door-steps; cottagers ran out, with babies in their arms; and little children, too young to know how to behave respectfully at the sight of an earl’s carriage, huzza-ed merrily as it bowled along. The woman at the lodge held the gate open, and dropped a low curtsey to the liveries. And now they were in the Park; and now they were in sight of the Towers, and silence fell upon the carriageful of ladies, only broken by one faint remark from Mrs. Goodenough’s niece, a stranger to the town, as they drew up before the double semicircular flight of steps which led to the door of the mansion.

“They call that a perron, I believe, don’t they?” she asked. But the only answer she obtained was a simultaneous “hush.” It was very awful, as Molly thought, and she half wished herself at home again. But she lost all consciousness of herself, by-and-by, when the party strolled out into the beautiful grounds, the like of which she had never even imagined. Green velvet lawns, bathed in sunshine, stretched away on every side into the finely-wooded park; if there were divisions and ha-has between the soft sunny sweeps of grass, and the dark gloom of the forest-trees beyond, Molly did not see them; and the melting away of exquisite cultivation into the wilderness had an inexplicable charm for her Near the house there were walls and fences; but they were covered with climbing roses, and rare honeysuckles and other creepers just bursting into bloom. There were flowerbeds, too, scarlet, crimson, blue, orange; masses of blossom lying on the greensward. Molly held Miss Browning’s hand very tight, as they loitered about in company with several other ladies, marshalled by a daughter of the Towers, who seemed half amused at the voluble admiration showered down upon every possible thing and place. Molly said nothing, as became her age and position; but every now and then she relieved her full heart by drawing a deep breath, almost like a sigh. Presently, they came to the long glittering range of greenhouses and hothouses, and an attendant gardener was there to admit the party. Molly did not care for this half so much as for the flowers in the open air; but Lady Agnes had a more scientific taste; she expatiated on the rarity of this plant, and the mode of cultivation required by that, till Molly began to feel very tired, and then very faint. She was too shy to speak for some time; but at length, afraid of making a greater sensation, if she began to cry, or if she fell against the stands of precious flowers, she caught at Miss Browning’s hand, and gasped out—

“May I go back, out into the garden? I can’t breathe here!”

“Oh, yes, to be sure, love! I daresay it’s hard understanding for you, love; but it’s very fine and instructive, and a deal of Latin in it too.”

She turned hastily round, not to lose another word of Lady Agnes’s lecture on orchids; and Molly turned back and passed out of the heated atmosphere. She felt better in the fresh air; and, unobserved and at liberty, went from one lovely spot to another, now in the open park, now in some shut-in flower-garden, where the song of the birds and the drip of the central fountain were the only sounds, and the tree-tops made an enclosing circle in the blue June sky; she went along without more thought as to her whereabouts