In four minutes she was at Bursley Town Hall, where she changed into
another car--full of people equally indifferent to the Musical
Festival--for the suburb of Hillport, where Mrs Clayton Vernon lived.
"Put me out opposite Mrs Clayton Vernon's, will you?" she said to the
conductor, and added, "you know the house?"
He nodded as if to say disdainfully in response to such a needless
question: "Do I know the house? Do I know my pocket?"
As she left the car she did catch two men discussing the Festival, but
they appeared to have no intention of attending it. They were
earthenware manufacturers. One of them raised his hat to her. And she
said to herself: "He at any rate knows how important my Gilbert is in
the Festival!"
It was at the instant she pushed open Mrs Clayton Vernon's long and
heavy garden gate, and crunched in the frosty darkness up the short
winding drive, that the notion of the peculiarity of her errand first
presented itself to her. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a relatively great lady,
living in a relatively great house; one of the few exalted or peculiar
ones who did not dine in the middle of the day like other folk.
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