This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to her memory so many difficult speeches and abortive meetings that she was jerked directly back to the London drawing-room, the family relics, and the tea-table; and at the same time recalled some half-finished or interrupted remark which she had wanted to make herself or to hear from him—she could not remember what it was.
“I expect it was me,” she said. “I was looking for my mother. It happens every time we come to Lincoln. In fact, there never was a family so unable to take care of itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters, because some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us out of our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a bull when I was a baby—but where did we leave the carriage? Down that street or the next? The next, I think.” She glanced back and saw that the others were following obediently, listening to certain memories of Lincoln upon which Mrs. Hilbery had started. “But what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I'm buying a cottage. I’m going to live here—as soon as I can find a cottage, and Mary tells me there'll be no difficulty about that.”
“But,” she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise, “you will give up the Bar, then?” It flashed across her mind that he must already be engaged to Mary.
“The solicitor’s office? Yes. I’m giving that up.”
“But why?” she asked. She answered herself at once, with a curious change from rapid speech to an almost melancholy tone. “I think you’re very wise to give it up. You will be much happier.”
At this very moment, when her words seemed to be striking a path into the future for him, they stepped into the yard of an inn, and there beheld the family coach of the Otways, to which one sleek horse was already attached, while the second was being led out of the stable door by the ostler.
