WE were able to get the same omnibus going home, which I was very glad of, for the strange defeat I had received made me feel doubly weary with the walk, which, after all, had not been a very long one. There was only one person in this omnibus, which was not a town omnibus, you know, but one which went between Chester and an important village, seven or eight miles off. He was an elderly man, very well dressed in black, with a white cravat. To tell the plain truth, I took him for a dissenting preacher by his dress; and as he looked very serious and respectable, and was very polite in helping us to get in, we had some little conversation after a while. When he saw me look at the houses we passed with an appearance of interest, he told me the names of them, or who they belonged to. He was exceedingly polite and deferential, so polite that he called me ma’am, which sounded odd; but I could only suppose he was an old-fashioned person and liked such antiquated ways of expression. I confess a suspicion of his real condition never crossed my mind. But he evidently knew everybody, and after a while my prevailing idea woke up again.

“Do you know,” said I, with a little hesitation, “the family at the Park—the Miss Mortimers? I should very much like to hear something about them.”

“There’s nobody I know better, ma’am,” said our companion with a slight look of surprise; “I’ve been with—that is, I’ve known ’em this fifty years.”

“Oh, then will you please tell me how they succeeded?” said I; “how did they come into the estate?”

“How they succeeded?” said the stranger, with a certain slow wonder and amazement; “why, ma’am, in the natural way, after their father as was Squire before them.”

Here I could not help thinking to myself that the dissenting clergy must be dreadfully uneducated, if this were one of them.

“But was there never any gap in the succession?” said I; “has it been in a straight line? has there been no break lately—no branch of the family passed over?”{220}

“Bless you, ma’am, you don’t know the Mortimers,” said our friend; “there’s never enough of them to make branches of the family. There was a second cousin the young ladies had a many years ago, but I never heard of no more of them, and he was distant like, and had no more thoughts of succession than I had. If that gen’lman was alive or had a family, things might be different now.”

“How do you mean things might be different now?” cried I.

“The ladies, ma’am, has never married,” said the man, who certainly could not be more than a Methodist local preacher at the utmost, “and, in the course of nature, there can’t be no natural heir.”

This view of the subject, however, was one totally unsatisfactory to me. “Are you sure,” said I, “that there never was any other heir spoken of—that there never was any story about the succession—that there was never anybody to dispute it with the Miss Mortimers? I thought I had heard some such story about——”

“Ah, you’re thinking, ma’am, of Eden Hall, just the next property,” said he.

“But was there never any claimant to the Park?” asked I, somewhat excited.

“No such thing,” said the man in black, “nor couldn’t be. Bless you, the family’s well known. There never was so much as a will-case, as I ever heard on; for why, you see, ma’am, there never was such a plenty of children to make quarrels. When there’s but two or so, there’s little can come of quarrelling. No, no! there never was no strange claimant to our estate.”

“To your estate, did you say?” cried I, in amazement.

“No, ma’am, no—no such presumption. I said our, and sure I might; I’ve been with the ladies this fifty year.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, much dismayed. This was certainly coming to the very head-quarters for information. This was no local preacher after all, but only the Miss Mortimers’ majordomo. If there had been any possible excuse for it, I should certainly have got out of the omnibus immediately, so utterly confounded and taken aback did I feel. But as we were still some two miles out of Chester, and we were all tired, and baby cross and sleepy, I had to think better of it. However, in my consternation I fell into instant silence, and felt really afraid of meeting the man’s eye. He sat opposite me, beside Lizzie, very respectful and quiet, and by no means obtr............