Truly a man of his size could not well
have been squeezed in with her paraphernalia, but I did my best to
console the old lady for the absence of her protector, and I began at
last to learn, as best I could from her bewildered and entangled
speech, how he had arrived, taken the whole management of her
affairs, and insisted on carrying her off; but her gratitude was
strangely confused with her new railway experiences and her anxieties
about her parcels. I felt as if I had drifted a little bit farther
from old times, when we held our heads rather fastidiously high above
"odd people."
But old Mrs. Samuel Alison _was_ a lady, as even Lady Diana allowed;
but of a kind nearly extinct. She had only visited London and Bath
once, on her wedding tour, in the days of stage-coaches; there was
provincialism in her speech, and the little she had ever been taught
she had forgotten, and she was the most puzzle-headed woman I ever
encountered. I do not think she ever realised that it was at
Harold's own expense that her rent and other little accounts had been
paid up, nor that Eustace was maintaining her. She thought herself
only on a long visit, and trusted the assurances that Harold was
settling everything for ever. The L30 income which remained to her
out of one of L200 served for her pocket-money, and all else was
provided for her, without her precisely understanding how; nor did
she seem equal to the complications of her new home.
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