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He did, in a very casual, laughing way such a positive set of lies that I marveled and began to wonder how much of Tom was acting and how much was real. Tom went back to London on the next train, and reached the "farm" with our baggage before it was time to dress for the eight-o'clock dinner. The dinner was long and stupid.
At last, however, she made up her mind to take them all with her, with the exception of the man, to whom she gave a holiday until the next day but one. When she asked her brother, he made no objection, but undertook to put them all up for a night, and so on Saturday morning the eight-o'clock express carried off Madame Tellier and her companions in a second-class carriage.
On it was written in pencil: "Westminster Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave on the 8 train for the South to-night. Come up to dinner." The eight-o'clock train, and it was now striking nine! "Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed on no account, and that I was to bring in no messages." "Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they here?"
The solitary waitress the hotel boasted was laying the tables for the eight-o'clock meal. The room had not yet assumed the spick-and-span appearance which it would wear later on.
I do not sneer at the purpose for which, at that chiming eight-o'clock bell, the household is called together. The urns are hissing, the plate is shining; the father of the house, standing up, reads from a gilt book for three or four minutes in a measured cadence.
It came about quite naturally, therefore, that they should gladly respond to any call which gave them the opportunity to listen to his conversation; and the eight-o'clock breakfast hour was chosen as being the only time the busy guests and host could readily call their own. Occasionally these breakfasts would take place as frequently as two or three times a week.
Breakfast had been served a half-hour earlier, Jane and Bessie having cooked some eggs, which Bessie ate alone, since Thaddeus and Liscomb were compelled to take the eight-o'clock train to town, hungry and forlorn. Liscomb was very good-natured about it to Thaddeus, but his book-keeper had a woful tale to tell of his employer's irritability when he returned home that night.
To which the chauffeur made some equally pointed remark, and they were off. But Borkins either did not realize that the eight-o'clock train for London was a slow one, or thought that it was the most convenient for the two gentlemen most interested, because he did not give a thought to the matter that that particular train stopped at the next station, some three miles away from Fetchworth.
Presently the distant eight-o'clock bell rings, and then Sir Joseph looks anxiously at his warts, for this is the signal to begin, and as usual he has forgotten the words. "Go on," says someone in a whisper. It cannot be Stroke, for his head is brooding on his breast. This mysterious voice haunted all the doings in the Den, and had better be confined in brackets.
Her name was never called in the exciting distribution which took place in the parlor or on the long piazza after the eight-o'clock mail had arrived, and so she seldom heeded it; but to-night there was a difference, and she watched the long line curiously until it passed the corner by the old brown farmhouse and disappeared from view.
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