Angela did not quite know how she got out of the house. There was some fuss and some regret on the part of Mrs Johnston, and Mercy very nearly cried, but at last she did get away. She stepped into her little carriage, and drove down the road and went straight as fast as she possibly could to Mrs Hogg's cottage. Mrs Hogg was still busy over her washing, but she had come to the wringing stage, and the steam was not quite so thick in the kitchen, and certainly her face, flushed and tired as it was, quite beamed when she saw Angela. "Dear, dear, Miss Angela, you mustn't come in. 'Tain't a fit place to put your dainty, beautiful feet into, 'tain't really, Miss." "Will you come and speak to me here for a minute, Mrs Hogg?" said Angela, and she waited in the tiny porch. Mrs Hogg came out. "You have a girl staying with you, haven't you?" "Oh, dear me, Miss, so I have, a young girl--I don't know nothing about her, not even her name, nor a single thing. It was Mary, my daughter, sent her. She's nothing but a fuss and a worry, and that touchy about her food as never was, turning up her nose at good red herring and at pease pudding, and dumplings, and what more can a poor woman give, I'd like to know?" "You are sure you don't know her name?" "No, Miss. She's a very queer girl." "Is she--you understand those sort of things, Mrs Hogg--is she, in your opinion, a young lady?" "Handsome is as handsome does," was Mrs Hogg's rejoinder, "and to my way o' thinking--to be frank with you--Miss, she ain't." This was rather a damper to Angela's hopes, but after a minute she reflected that probably Nesta was a rough specimen of the genus Lady, and that at any rate it was her duty to follow up this clue to the end. "I should like to see her," she said. "Where is she now?" "Oh, Miss, if I thought, even for a single moment, that she was a friend of yourn, I'd treat her very different; but all she did was to stand in the middle of my kitchen on Saturday--" "On Saturday?" said Angela. "Yes; Miss, on Saturday, and she says as bold as brass--`Mary Hogg sent me.' That was her; but if I'd known--" "Where is she now?" said Angela: "I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in all flustered and angry, forsooth, because poor old Mrs Johnston hadn't been given a stroke of blindness--that seemed to put her out more than anything else. She must have a most malicious mind--that is, according to my way of thinking. Well, anyhow, Miss, I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in, and I told her to take it out and eat it. I don't know from Adam where she is now." "She would go, perhaps, into the country?" "Well, Miss, perhaps she would. Would you like Ben and Dan to go along and look for her!" "I wish they would," said Angela. Ben and Dan were rotated out of their lairs in the back part of the premises, and were only too charmed to do Angela's bidding. They flew off, fleet as a pair of little hares, down the shady lanes, looking in vain for Nesta.