The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

mind the fact that Queen Anne began to reign in 1702. I don’t know how it was. These accidents do sometimes occur. And she knew that in Queen Anne’s day ladies wore hoops. Also, since they had gone back a hundred years to Boney’s time, perhaps this second venture had taken her back two hundred years. If so⁠—

“Please,” she said, very quickly, “is this 1707, and is Queen Anne dead?”

“Heaven forbid,” said everyone in the room; and Bet added, “La, child, don’t delay us with your prattle. The coach will be here at ten, and we must lie at Tonbridge tonight.”

So Elfrida, all eyes and ears, squeezed into a corner between a bandbox and a roll of thick, pink-flowered silk and looked and listened.

Bet, she gathered, was her cousin⁠—an Arden, too. She and Bet and the maids, and an escort of she couldn’t quite make out how many men, were to go down to Arden together. The many men were because of the Arden jewels, that had been reset in the newest mode, and the collar of pearls and other presents Uncle Arden had given to Bet; and the highwaymen, who, she learned, were growing so bold that they would attack a coach in St. Paul’s Churchyard in broad daylight. Bet, it seemed, had undertaken commissions for all her girl friends near Arden, and had put off most of them till the last moment. She had carefully spent her own pin-money during her stay in town, and was now hastily spending theirs. The room was crowded with tradesmen and women actually pushing each other to get near the lady who had money to spend. One woman with a basket of china was offering it in exchange for old clothes or shoes, just as old women do now at back doors. And Cousin Bet’s maid had a very good bargain, she considered, in a china teapot and two dishes, in exchange for a worn, blue lutestring dress and a hooped petticoat of violet quilted satin. Then there was a hasty meal of cakes and hot chocolate, and, Elfrida being wrapped up in long-skirted coat and scarves almost beyond bearing, it was announced that the coach was at the door. It was a very tight fit when at last they were all packed into the carriage, for though the carriage was large there was a great deal to fill it up, what with Cousin Bet and her great hoops, and the maids, and the bandboxes and packages of different sizes and shapes, and the horrid little pet dog that yapped and yahed, and tried to bite everyone, from the footmen to Elfrida. The streets were narrow and very dirty, and smelt very nasty in the hot June sun.

And it was very hot and stuffy inside the carriage, and more bumpety than you would think possible⁠—more bumpety even than a wagon going across a furrowed cornfield. Elfrida felt rather headachy, as you do when you go out in a small boat and everyone says it is not at all rough. By the time the carriage got to Lewisham Elfrida’s bones were quite sore, and she felt as though she had been beaten. There were no springs to the carriage, and it reminded her of a bathing-machine more than anything else⁠—you know the way it bumps on the shingly part of the shore when they are drawing you up at the beach, and you tumble about and can’t go on dressing, and all your things slide off the seats. The maids were cross and looked it. Cousin Bet had danced till nigh midnight, and been up with the lark, so she said. And, having said it, went to sleep in a corner of the carriage looking crosser than the maids. Elfrida began to feel that empty, uninterested sensation which makes you wish you hadn’t come. The carriage plunged and rattled on through the green country, the wheels bounding in and out of the most dreadful ruts. More than once the wheel got into a rut so deep that it took all the men to heave it out again. Cousin Bet woke up to say that it was vastly annoying, and instantly went to sleep again.

Elfrida, being the smallest person in the carriage except Amour, the dog, was constantly being thrown into somebody’s lap⁠—to the annoyance of both parties. It was very much the most uncomfortable ride she had ever had. She thought of the smooth, swift rush of the train⁠—even the carrier’s cart was luxury compared to this. “The roads aren’t like roads at all,” she told herself, “they’re like ploughed fields with celery trenches in them”⁠—she had a friend a market gardener, so she knew.

Long before the carriage drew up in front of the “Bull” at Tonbridge, Elfrida felt that if she only had a piece of poetry ready she would say it, and ask the Mouldiwarp to take her back to her own times, where, at any rate, carriages had springs and roads were roads. And when the carriage did stop she was so stiff she could hardly stand.

“Come along in,” said a stout, pleasant-faced lady in a frilled cap; “come in, my poppet. There’s a fine supper, though it’s me says it, and a bed that you won’t beat in Kent for soft and clean, you may lay to that.”

There was a great bustle of shouting ostlers and stablemen; the horses were taken out before the travellers were free of the carriage. Supper was laid in a big, low, upper room, with shining furniture and windows at both ends, one set looking on the road where the sign of the “Bull” creaked and swung, and the other looking on a very neat green garden, with clipped box hedges and yew arbours. Getting all the luggage into the house seemed likely to be a long business. Elfrida saw that she would not be missed, and she slipped down the twisty-cornery backstairs and through the back kitchen into the green garden. It