Not a role for which Mrs Clowes was physically fitted; but her
prolific daughter, Hephzibah, to whom it appertained by prescription,
could not possibly play it any longer, and would, indeed, be
incapacitated from any role whatever for at least a month. And the
season was not yet over; for folk were hardier in those days.
The reins stretched out from the careless hand of Mrs Clowes and
vanished through a slit between the double doors, which had been fixed
slightly open. Mrs Clowes's gaze, penetrating now and then the slit,
could see the gleam of her lamp's ray on a horse's flank. The only
sounds were the hoof-falls of the horse, the crunching of the wheels on
the wet road, the occasional rattle of a vessel in the racks when the
van happened to descend violently into a rut, and the steady murmur of
Mrs Clowes's voice rehearsing the grandiloquence of the part of
Dulcibel.
And then there was another sound, which Mrs Clowes did not notice until
it had been repeated several times; the cry of a human voice out on the
road:
"Missis!"
She opened wide the doors of the van and looked prudently forth.
Naturally, inevitably, Jock-at-a-Venture was trudging alongside, level
with the horse's tail! He stepped nimbly--he was a fine walker--but none
the less his breath came short and quick, for he had been making haste
up a steepish hill in order to overtake the van.
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