Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/247

 everything speaks to you of a dead friend. Yet Margaret and her aunt must have the drawing-room to themselves!"

"Is Mrs.—is her aunt come?" asked Mr. Thornton.

"Come? Yes! maid and all. One would have thought she might have come by herself at such a time! And now I shall have to turn out and find my way to the Clarendon."

"You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or six empty bed-rooms at home."

"Well aired?"

"I think you may trust my mother for that."

"Then I'll only run up-stairs and wish that wan girl good-night, and make my bow to her aunt, and go off with you straight."

Mr. Bell was some time up-stairs. Mr. Thornton began to think it long, for he was full of business and had hardly been able to spare the time for running up to Crampton, and enquiring how Miss Hale was.

When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said:

"I was kept by those women in the drawing-room. Mrs. Shaw is anxious to get home—on account of her daughter, she says—and wants Margaret to go off with her at once. Now she is no more fit for travelling than I am for flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she has friends she must see—that she must wish good-bye to several people; and then her aunt worried her about old claims, and was she forgetful of old friends? And she said, with a great burst of crying, she should