Lady Bell had been making her steps slower—she stood still altogether. She was, when she was not fit to sink and die, ready to see wonders and miracles in every step of this journey, and the sight of miracles braced her for the moment, and lent her genius, and a faculty of seizing every little incident and turning it to her purpose. “There is help for it, landlord,” she found courage and voice to call up, in contradiction of the man. “I, too, must get on to Thorpe. I shall take the vacant seat in the chaise.” The landlord and the gentleman thus suddenly interrupted, leapt asunder like two detected conspirators on the stage. The landlord held down his candle, and threw its light on the slender little figure in the ordinary lady’s travelling-dress, standing in the court below, while the gentleman cried, “By Jove! this smacks of magic!” But the conclusion was arrived at by a third person. A lady, with her head enveloped in a night-cap, put it out of a door opening into the gallery, and declared promptly, “It is a piece of uncommon good luck. We cannot afford, for our child’s sake, to spend a shilling that we can spare—make the bargain,” and withdrew with as little loss of time as she had taken to present herself, and throw the weight of her authority into the scale. “Ahem! you understand, madam, that the single seat in the post-chaise, with the advantage of our protection and society, is dirt cheap at a sovereign,” called down the gentleman from his gallery with an air of importance, and also with an evident eagerness to turn a penny, which savoured of possible impecuniosity in time past, and probable opulence, by dint of similar bargain driving, in time to come. “I understand, and I agree,” answered Lady Bell, still standing in the yard below, awaiting the termination of the affair. “Then you hold yourself in readiness to be called at six o’clock in the morning,” concluded the gentleman, with a flourishing bow, to which Lady Bell forced her stiffening knees to respond with a curtsey. The little transaction was complete—even to witnesses provided in the chambermaid and the landlord, not over well-pleased to find his departing and arriving guests in league thus to free him of their company.